Maverick Origins: What’s in a Name?

Although the slide toward autocracy has been my recent focus, I’m also revising and releasing selections from Witness to the Fall, a collection of relevant previously published work — autobiographical reminiscences, as well as essays published in recent years. The introduction is below, followed by links to several chapters.

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I’ve been publicly sharing research and my views on local, national and global issues for more than half a century. At first in a high school paper and university magazine, then professionally in newspapers, magazines and online. My earliest regular column, for a Vermont daily, appeared in 1969 in the midst of the Vietnam war and cultural revolution of that era. I called it “Polarities in Our Time.”

About nine years later, when an “alternative” weekly was launched in Burlington, I tried again in a column called “Immediate Release.” It leaned more toward reportage — enterprise journalism and interviews — but continued to reflect subjects of personal interest, regardless of whether they were attracting public attention at the time. When I became editor of that paper, I dropped the column but wrote editorials weekly.

In 1983, after leaving the Vermont Vanguard Press, I syndicated a column that appeared in several newspapers — until taking a break, and an extended journey across the country and through Mexico. It was time to reflect and rethink my assumptions. 

More than a decade passed until I wrote an ongoing column again. The opportunity emerged when I returned to Vermont after several years in New Mexico and California, plus travels and life in Denmark and Germany. This time it was for another weekly. I called the reports “Maverick Chronicles.”

The name was chosen for several reasons. In 1985, I’d launched Maverick Bookstore and Gallery, which became a lively oasis in Burlington’s Old North End for several years during the Sanders era. The name felt appropriate, philosophically and also because the Lloyds, my son’s family on Robin Lloyd’s side, were actually related to the Maverick clan in Texas. 

Samuel Maverick was a pioneer with a big personality and the origin of the modern usage of the word. The official story is that he won a ranch in a card game and afterward declined to brand his steers. Unbranded steers became known around San Antonio as mavericks.

The TV show Maverick was pure fiction, but Brett Maverick was a cheeky anti-hero and personal favorite in my youth. There was also a real and large, real Maverick clan. Lola Maverick married Robin’s grandfather, who became famous briefly as a so-called “Communist millionaire.” Lola helped organize the Ford Peace Ship before World War I and co-founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Some of their children were activists as well, including Robin’s dad Bill. I would eventually become editor of Toward Freedom, the publication he founded in 1952.

 

So, when I thought about launching an independent business, as well as continuing my journalism and peace work, using Maverick to help define it felt apt. On the first anniversary of the bookstore, a group of modern Texas Mavericks sent a ceramic calf as a gift.  Since running the bookstore, which later relocated downtown and eventually merged with the local peace center’s book business, I have used it as a handle and publishing imprint. In 1997, “Maverick Chronicles” began a two year run as a weekly column in The Vermont Times, a weekly successor to The Vermont Vanguard Press. 

In the decades since then, I’ve written hundreds of essays for a variety of outlets, online and in print. You can find many of them on websites like the Center for Global Research, Toward Freedom, Truthout, VTDigger, ZNetwork, Muckrack and UPI. Books are available from Amazon. Now, along with the current series of posts released on Substack, I’m reviving Maverick Chronicles as a kicker and framework one more time.

A Writer’s Life

Even back in grade school, I felt the urge to communicate. Art and music came easily enough, but writing was irresistible. It felt like a compulsion. Over time, through economic and social necessity, I added the roles of editor and manager to the mix, and at times agent of change. Taking shape gradually, my goal was responsible advocacy, informed by a search for truth and a commitment to social justice and right livelihood. Those efforts, beliefs, commitments, and aspirations led to memorable encounters, journeys and insights I try to share — before I forget.

As Bill Maher once said, “With age comes wisdom, but only if you can remember it.”

I started writing stories at about 10, mostly short plays and satirical skits, performed in classes at holidays or special events. Next, as editor of The Lance, the student paper at Holy Cross High School, I took an early shot at opinion writing. Before graduating, reviews were appearing in a Long Island daily. At Syracuse University there was some newswriting and a supplement for the Daily Orange, plus essays and satire for Vintage, the campus magazine I designed and edited. 

In Bennington, still 21, it was a stretch to manage the daily newspaper’s darkroom and write everything from accidents to features on a deadline. But ultimately the Bennington Banner was a priceless training opportunity, time to get past any writer’s block.

After that on-the-job training, also an invaluable introduction to Vermont life, I was hired by Bennington College, where I mostly wrote press releases and covered promotional events, but also edited a quarterly, and experienced professional alienation for the first time. Luckily, the job didn’t last long and was followed by a mentally healthy shift into counseling and public service. Before long, however, the management at Champlain Work and Training Programs figured out that I could also write grants, which led to consulting work with school systems. Eventually, I wrote a federal grant for myself, which led to a campus office and graduate degree at the University of Vermont.

By 1975, I was teaching journalism and planning skills at the fledgling Burlington College, and running a local used bookstore called The Frayed Page with other members of a collective. The store was an organizing center for the growing anti-nuclear movement and spun off a magazine, culminating in a people’s history of the state. That eventually grew into Restless Spirits & Popular Movements: A Vermont History. I also freelanced for news services, magazines and community papers until a group of UVM grads launched two alternative weeklies in one year. The second presented a golden opportunity to use much of what I had learned about journalism and Vermont so far.

During my years with the Vanguard Press, I produced more than 50 cover stories and hundreds of news stories and features. For the first time since college I could experiment with New Journalism and test boundaries, trying anything the publishers allowed, writing first drafts of stories that would stay with me, developing and evolving for years. I also exposed public and private misdeeds, and interviewed everyone from prisoners and protesters to presidential wannabes.

Beyond that, I was part of a movement that transformed Burlington, produced a new Vermont political party, and launched the career of Bernie Sanders. That story was retold in two books, The People’s Republic and Managing Chaos. For decades my work has included an eclectic mixture of freelance assignments and investigations, trips, trials and profiles, syndicated columns, study guides, documentary scripts, candidate speeches, ad campaigns, position papers, conference addresses, radio broadcasts, legislative testimony, quarterly and annual reports, and grants for just causes from immigrant rights to nuclear sanity and environmental justice. Persuasive communication was part of almost every job.

Eventually, there were also 15 books, which rarely paid that well. My favorite is Spirits of Desire, a paranormal mystery set in the 1870s. In contrast, ghost writing was lucrative, though sometimes frustrating. After spending months looking deeply into a subject, despite being Buddhist it was tough to stay unattached when someone else took the credit.

Since February I’ve been thinking and writing about the slide toward an American-style autocracy. Going forward, some essays will continue to look at current events, but there will also be selections from Witness to the Fall, a collection of previously published work for periodicals and websites. I’ll share autobiographical reminiscences from the 1970s and 1980s, and articles developed and published during the last 15 years.

New essays on current events will be posted as the struggle to preserve democracy and human rights continues.

Witness to the Fall — Chapters

Unstuck in Time: When “The Plan” Blew Up

Bennington, Vonnegut and a Campus Breakdown

Consciousness & Conscience: Finding Right Livelihood

Lessons of Buddhism, Bernie and Public Service

The Rise of the Electronic Messiah, Part One

The Rise of the Electronic Messiah, Part Two

Democratic Distemper: Carter and the Trilateral Commission

Coming Up: Conspiracies and Reagan Myths

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https://mavmedia.substack.com/

Immigrants as Enemies: When Dissent is a Crime

It’s a disturbing pattern: blaming newcomers, immigrants and those who are different for our problems and turning deep disagreements and dissent into crimes. It has happened often around the world in times of war and domestic division.

In the US, it happened shortly after the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain and established a new form of government. Again in the 1880s, when workers — many of them immigrants from Europe — were demanding better working conditions from big business. And after the two world wars, when ideas that challenged capitalism were considered so threatening that thousands were arrested, jailed, and deported.

We’re hearing it again now. We’re in a war, say politicians and officials who run federal agencies and state governments. But not an invasion from another nation. Instead, it’s a homegrown threat from so-called “alien criminals.” That’s the rationale for the US president’s use of an 18th century law — the Alien Enemies Act — that supposedly allows the federal government to detain and deport people who immigrate from countries deemed foreign adversaries. It’s part of a sweeping crackdown that might someday target anyone.

One small victory in this struggle was a Vermont judge’s ruling on April 30 to release Mahsen Madhawi, a Palestinian Vermonter detained in April by federal immigration authorities.  A student organizer at Columbia University and lawful US resident for a decade, he was arrested in Colchester, Vermont during an interview as part of his citizenship naturalization process. US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford mentioned the Red Scare and McCarthy era in his decision, periods he compared to the present. “These are not chapters that we look back on with much pride,” he said.

The Alien Enemies Act is part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, adopted in 1798, which gave the federal government expanded authority to regulate non-citizens in times of war. Since then it has been used three times, during the War of 1812 and both World Wars I and II. It can be invoked “whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion” and allows for non-U.S. citizens aged 14 and older to be “apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as alien enemies.” 

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether this applies to those rendered to prison in El Salvador or elsewhere. Meanwhile, Fernandez Rodriquez, a Southern District of Texas judge appointed by President Trump, has prohibited the administration from using the Act because the president’s claims about a Venezuelan gang do not add up to an “invasion.”

The original excuse for this abuse of power was French interference with American shipping more than 200 years ago. It was supposed to allow President John Adams to imprison or deport any potentially dangerous alien and declare the publication of “false, scandalous or malicious writing” against the law. But the first target was an American, an opposition newspaper editor. Others jailed included a Vermont congressman who was re-elected anyway. Adams’ successor Thomas Jefferson pardoned everyone who was convicted and even refunded the fines.

A related law, the Espionage Act, was passed in 1917, and became a weapon to imprison people who opposed World War I, conscription or other policies. That included Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate for president who was jailed for interfering with the draft. By the end of 1919, after the war had ended, hundreds of Russian immigrants were nevertheless deported; hundreds more were rounded up and subjected to secret hearings.

During the Second World War, 120,000 US citizens of Japanese ancestry were taken from their homes and imprisoned in remote detention centers, simply because they were suspected of potential disloyalty. After the war, dissent was risky when relations with Russia hardened into the Cold War. An anti-sedition law, the Smith Act, passed in 1946, was used against leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, then against those suspected of Communist sympathies. Few people had enough nerve to defend the first victims, and the war on dissent escalated. Repression soon snowballed into another red scare, leading to state and federal investigations of “un-American activities.” 

In 1951, a Supreme Court decision approved the imprisonment of 11 Communist leaders, not for any overt acts that threatened national security, but rather simply for organizing a political party and teaching Marxism. We are fast approaching a similar legal turning point.

But let’s focus on an earlier example, the red scare known as Haymarket, a crackdown launched in early May 1886 that set back the labor movement and etched the image of “foreign radicals” as terrorists into the American psyche. It began in Chicago, then experiencing rapid industrialization and massive immigration. Irish, Scandinavian, Czech, English and German newcomers dominated the blue-collar workforce. First and second generation German immigrants comprised 33 percent of the city’s population, a larger number than those living in most urban centers in Germany.

Strikes and peaceful demonstrations were often disrupted by armed police, who beat and sometimes killed protesters. Businesses created private armies, and newspapers called for a crackdown. Similar to the current rhetoric, those who opposed government policies or business practices were labeled violent outsiders. A few protesters did indeed support an armed response to official repression.

The confrontation between the labor movement and capitalists crescendoed on May 1, the first May Day, when 300,000 workers across the country participated in a walk out and demanded a shorter work week. This launched the movement for an eight-hour day. In Chicago, 40,000 people went on strike. Two days later, during a confrontation between strikers, scabs and management thugs, several people were killed. 

The following night, May 4, someone threw a bomb into the crowd during a protest, killing several policemen. It was just the excuse the establishment needed. What followed was one of the most shameful moments in US legal history.

The first step was a reign of terror: offices, meeting halls, and private homes raided; dozens arrested, interrogated, and beaten; some newspapers shut down while others ran hateful headlines and propaganda. Eventually, eight men were arrested, all but one of them immigrants. None could be directly linked to violence or the bomb, but that didn’t matter. They were essentially placed on trial for their “unpopular” views.

Guilty verdicts were predictable. Nevertheless, over the next year a strong clemency campaign was waged. Although many supporters did not endorse the admittedly radical views of those who had been condemned, they knew that a death sentence was deeply unjust. And public sentiment did shift. This eventually seemed to persuade the governor, but he was also swayed by business leaders demanding executions. In the end he commuted the sentences of two defendants who wrote letters expressing remorse — basically admitting to a crime they had not committed. One of those convicted opted for suicide the day before the executions; four men were hung.

The impact was broad and profound. It demonstrated how the government and business can join forces to repress and destroy those — especially immigrants — whose beliefs and lifestyles threaten them. But for decades the Chicago martyrs were also a symbol for workers and activists around the world, their dignity in the face of ignorance and repression inspiring countless others to stand up. The hangings had underlined the fragility of democracy in a time of fanatical behavior and manipulation of mass opinion.

At times, the moment we are in sounds like a strange echo of the struggle between bible fundamentalists and believers in evolution early in the 20th century. In the moving play, Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized defense attorney, Henry Drummond, rails against the forces set loose by what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. “Can't you understand?” he implores the judge, “that if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. 

“If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, backward, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!” 

Also available at Center for Global Research: https://www.globalresearch.ca/immigrants-enemies-when-dissent-crime/5885834

If you want to learn more about Haymarket and repression of dissent, listen to my play Inquisitions (and Other Un-American Activities), now available as a podcast series:

Spreaker:https://facebook.spreaker.com/episode/inquisitions-an-audio-drama-act-1--19064693

IHeart:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/966-peoples-republic-from-the-49216082/episode/inquisitions-an-audio-drama-49224763/

Distributed by Squeaky Wheel: https://www.squeakywheel.net/inquisitions.html

Inquisitions — An Audio Drama in Three Acts

When national security and civil liberties are at odds, fundamental rights are often undermined or violated. “Inquisitions (and Other Un-American Activities)” explores this theme through a dramatic recreation of the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and other crackdowns on dissent. With the FBI interrogation of activist Lucy Parsons in 1919 by a young J. Edgar Hoover at its center, the drama takes listeners back to the birth of the movement for an eight-hour workday, the resulting violence in 1886 Chicago, and the trial and execution of innocent immigrant activists. Written by Greg Guma, directed by Bill Boardman, and produced by Catalyst Theatre.