Growing Up in the Last Century-- MY FIRST TASTE OF POLITICS: GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE POLLS BY THE ALBANY MACHINE, June 1972

        

Albany's long-time Mayor Erastus Corning with Democratic Party Chairman Dan O'Connell (with hat), circa 1970.

        This story is complicated, so bear with me.

        I was just a 20 year-old college kid when I got my first real bloody nose – figurative and almost very literal – in the political world.  Welcome to Albany, New York, my hometown (scenic aerial photo above), back in the days of the Democratic machine, party boss Daniel P. O’Connell, and mayor-for-life Erastus Corning.

Growing Up in the Last Century: TEAR-GASSED in WASHINGTON, D.C., May 1970

  

       I was just 18 years old, a college freshman, on May 4, 1970, when National Guardsmen in Ohio opened fire and killed four student protestors at Kent State University.  Fifty years later, I still remember the looks on peoples’ faces as news of the shootings spread like lightning across my own college campus a thousand miles away at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Boss Tweed Audiobook : The Images and a five minute sample

  

   Click here for latest reviews of Trotsky in New York,1917:

 

Grisha Ziv on Trotsky, 1917, translated from original Russian

                                       

 Trotsky, right, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, standing, and Ziv, front, circa 1898.