Two "Gangs" of San Francisco - Comrades Who've Met Weekly
for 30 Years
By Nadya Williams
December 1, 2010
Submitted to Portside by the author.
[author's note: It will be published in the Mendocino paper,
the Anderson Valley Advertiser - and also posted on the
People's World web.]
Certainly there are many circles of friends and colleagues
who meet regularly to socialize and network. What
distinguishes San Francisco's "Fort Point Gang" and "Specs
Gang" is: their politics - firmly on The Left; their
lifelong activism and commitment to many struggles: labor,
artistic freedom, peace, civil rights, Cuba solidarity, and
anti-fascism, among many others; and their longevity - each
group has met every week in The City for nearly 30 years.
Both gangs welcome `outsiders' to their ranks and both now
also happen to have a husband and wife couple as de facto
leaders.
Former San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman can be
credited with the informal creation in the mid-1980s of "The
Specs Gang" - a group of mostly writers and artists who
congregate regularly on the same weeknight at a large back
table of a venerable North Beach watering hole. Actually,
two started the gathering, as Hirschman is the associate
editor of an annual political literary magazine called Left
Curve, whose founding editor, Csaba Polony, began to meet
weekly with Hirschman in the bar to review submissions and
select material for the journal. Friends would drift in to
discuss poems and articles, and to enjoy their company, thus
the weekly social circle grew to the present number of
anywhere from 15 to 30 or more. Agneta Falk, a Swedish-
British feminist writer who married Hirschman a decade ago
now completes the couple.
Nate and Corine Thornton are the current center around which
"The Fort Point Gang" crystallizes each week for the past 30
years. The brick Civil War-era Fort Point at the southern
foot of the Golden Gate Bridge is where the group
congregates on the same weekday morning on commemorative
benches they installed long ago. Each bench has metal
plates engraved with the names of past members who have died
and left impressive legacies of union organizing, combat in
the international brigades of the Spanish Civil War and/or
World War II, and life-long dedication to civil rights,
socialism and democracy. At 95, Nate Thornton is one of
only 12 remaining American veterans of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, who fought along with 3,000 other Americans in the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39) against the fascist Generissimo
Francisco Franco. The total number of volunteers in the
International Brigades was an amazing 45,000 - many of whom
lie in the Spanish earth. Nate's wife Corine, who just
turned 88, is Mother Courage personified and a stand-alone
activist in her own right. They were married in 1988 at the
Fort's benches, and together have joined Freedom to Travel
flights to Cuba, demonstrated at the School of the America's
Watch, picketed with Grandmothers for Peace, and
participated in many other movements.
Stalwarts of The Specs Gang include painters who wait
tables, aging poets of the Beat Era, professional writers
who have "made it," others who hold down semi-professional
jobs to fund their art, music and writing, as well as
filmmakers, spiritualists, and radicals of all stripes -
plus their younger friends and aspirants. Many of the
Gang's poets have joined the Revolutionary Poet's Brigade,
which Hirschman and three others founded in the Spring of
2009 - their first anthology has just seen print. There are
now more than 40 members in the Bay Area alone, and brigades
have been formed in Los Angeles and Albuquerque. The very
terms Brigade and Brigadista were taken directly from
Spanish Civil War veterans like Nathan Thornton.
The denizens of The Fort Point Gang are much older and,
unlike the Specs Gang, definitely working class - union
members all. Whereas the intellectuals of North Beach tend
to lean toward an anarchist philosophy and to live from hand
to mouth, many of the unionized seniors of Fort Point were
active in the Communist and Socialist Parties, especially in
their youth, and are mostly all retired now on good pensions
with full healthcare - for which they fought tooth and nail.
However, the ravages of time and hard work have taken their
physical toll on many of the Ft. Pointers: a former fireman
must now carry a small oxygen tank where ever he goes - the
cumulative effects of on-the-job smoke inhalation; a former
waitress has chronic back and foot pain; and a retired
longshoreman and carpenter has asbestos in his lungs from
the shipyards. On the other hand, some in the Specs Gang
grapple with the debilitating consequences of life-long
infusions of booze and other substances. Not all the Fort
Pointers are working class, and they proudly counted among
their ranks Doris Brin Walker, a pioneering labor and human
rights lawyer and former president of the National Lawyers
Guild, whose death in 2009 elicited a lengthy obituary in
the New York Times. However, before attending law school in
the 1940s, `Doby' was a member of the Young Communist League
and thus opted for a stint as a cannery worker, which set
her firmly on the path of the labor movement, and the legal
fight for justice and fairness for working people.
Every year, on the Pointer's weekly meeting day closest to
May Day, the Gang's members hold a special ceremony under
the Golden Gate Bridge - reading the names of Comrades who
have passed on, while tossing red carnations into the waves
lapping at the rocks at the foot of the Fort. Many names
are read in addition to the nine that grace the metal plates
on the benches. One comrade's plaque reads: "Bill Bailey
1910 - 1995 Labor and Human Rights Activist, Seaman,
Soldier, Author, Actor." Quite a legacy. Besides writing
his life's story and appearing in several films, Bill Bailey
was one of "The Lincolns," the American contingent of the
International Brigades who fought and died in Spain to
defend the democratic Republic. Their efforts and those of
the Spanish people failed, but after Dictator Franco's death
in 1975, trips back to Spain and reunions of Las Brigadistas
were organized. Apparently Bailey's life-long desire "to
piss on Franco's grave" was realized on one such visit. His
son, also a seaman, now retired, is a part of the Fort
Pointers today.
The Specs Gang's writers are tirelessly active, and are an
important militant voice in local and global literary scenes
Jack Hirschman, San Francisco's 2006 Poet Laureate and Poet-
in-Residence at The City's Public Library, organizes the bi-
annual San Francisco International Poetry Festival. He and
his partner Agneta Falk are regularly invited to read at
poetry festivals in Europe and Latin America - and most
recently in China. But in April of this year, they were
invited to the long-standing annual Festival of Poetry in
Basra, Iraq - the first festival to be held since the US
invasion. Hirschman and editor Polony launch the annual
Left Curve magazine every May Day with a reading on April
30th at the venerable City Lights Book Store, directly
across Columbus Avenue from Specs Bar. At a recent poetry
workshop in Boulder, Colorado's Naropa University, Hirschman
made "The Communist Manifesto" required reading of his
students. The first anthology of the Revolutionary Poet's
Brigade is now in print, and contains the works of many who
have read at past SF International Poetry Festivals - "75
Poets, 26 Countries, One Voice," reads the cover. More than
a dozen poems are printed in their original languages and
alphabets (Arabic, Bangladeshi, Hebrew, etc.), along side
their English translations.
Whereas the Specs Gang meets in the evening and tends to
drink copiously, the Fort Point Gang gathers in the morning,
then drives to lunch at a local café. The two groups rarely
intersect, but since this writer frequents both gangs, the
Specs group's leader, Hirschman, was invited last January to
Nate Thornton's 95th birthday, starting at, where else, Fort
Point. Under a brilliant sun, with the orange bridge and
blue sea as backdrops, Hirschman read a poem written
especially for Nate.
Brigadistas of justice and light,
who cherish the vision of a world trans-
formed into ever blossoming tomorrows,
are part of the birthday acclamations for
you, Nate Thornton, who knows more
than most that that vision will never die.
"Beaten, chained, slandered - look, it's
reaching for your voice. Lift it! Let it
rise in its place. The Internationale
shall be the human race."
- excerpted from "The Great Legacy" by Jack
Hirschman
After lunch and birthday cake at the café last January,
Hirschman suggested singing "The International." With his
deep baritone booming across the restaurant, he led the
group, clenched fists in the air, in Nate's "favorite song"
- much to the bewilderment of the other patrons.
A comprehensive and richly illustrated 36-page booklet on
Nate and Corine Thornton, "I am an International," was
published this summer by Sylvia E. Bartley of Noyo Hill
House, Fort Bragg, CA.
Modestly-priced copies can be
ordered by e-mailing: nhh at mcn.org or phoning
(707) 964-6485.
The first anthology of the "Revolutionary Poets Brigade - 76
Poets, 25 Countries, One Voice" has just been published and
is available to the public at an affordable price. The 375-
page anthology can be purchased by e-mailing:
revolutionary at outofour.com
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