VL-IV: Chap7- Mafiosi- friends or foes?

[Joseph Tracy]

This is a provocative question. What is the difference between a  
criminal enterprise that caters to non state-approved activities  but  
needs political influence to survive and other corporate interests  
that need the political influence of the state to  criminally limit  
the bargaining power of people organized for fair wages, and safe air/ 
water/food/working conditions?  The friendliness between DL and  
Wayvone reminds of the historic connections between the mob and big  
labor. The labor movement had to negotiate some iffy bargains with  
the powers that be.

The scene where the Wayvone muscle man  is about to beat up Billy  
Barf is, to me, credible and telling. In a sense the Mob dude has  
both power  and a kind of case in that they have been lied to. At   
that point  Isaiah 2:4

( He will judge between the nations
  and will settle disputes for many peoples.
        They will beat their swords into plowshares
        and their spears into pruning hooks.
        Nation will not take up sword against nation,

        nor will they train for war anymore.)

  intervenes  and using a great volume of words to let tempers cool  
and persuasive logic about the costs and benefits of violence vs. non- 
violence acts as a kind of ambassador for a very different culture.  
This lower ranking  Mafia dude  is more open to reason  and a win win  
negotiation than any rep of the Govt  that I can think of in the  
story.  I find this totally credible, because I have seen this kind  
of interaction.

Ambiguity saturates everything except aggressive  violence in this  
story. Isaiah wants to make a commercial go of fantasy gunplay,  
partly in reaction to his over-earnest peacenik parents, but when  
push comes to shove his instincts and skills are to make peace and  
prove adequate to bring about peace and the music of the evening  
unfolds with  pleasure for all.




On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:53 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:


> The Wayvones are lovable mobsters, and we learn that DL is an old  
> friend of Ralph Wayvone:
>
> Ralph W. to DL, after she warns him that Brock Vond's on the loose:
>
> "'Hey -- I got nothing to do with pot growers, all right?  You know  
> that.  As soon as I saw all this drug hysteria coming, I  
> diversified on out
> of that whole market.  Plus, it's a Republican Justice Department,  
> come on.  I'm copacetic with these people.'"
>
> So Ralph is pals with both the Republican establishment and the pot- 
> growing counter-establishment.  If selling pot gives you a counter- 
> culture respectability, how about selling heroin?  A slippery slope.
>
> I bring this up because I was watching Mario and Melvin Van  
> Peebles' flick Panther (2005)the other night. The admittedly not- 
> rigidly-fact-based film has a scene where a rep from COINTELPRO  
> meets with a mafia guy and makes plans for the mob to saturate the  
> ghetto with heroin as a means of killing the incipient radicalism  
> in the community.  Whether or not this is historically accurate,  
> it's a conspiracy theory that rings true.  There's some  
> documentation out there that COINTELPRO enlisted the help of the  
> mob on occasion.  The mafia has an odd kinship with the left, in  
> terms of government harassment.  But it's also at odds with the  
> left, in its ties with Big Business and Republican-ism.
>
> There's a heroic sheen to the pot or coca grower -- simple back-to- 
> the-land farm-folk, minding their own business and being harassed  
> by the Government.
> The bad guys are the big distributers, who bring violence into the  
> equation. Small is Beautiful.  In that sense, how does Ralph W.  
> come out as a good guy (assuming that any friend of DL's has their  
> heart in the right place, or at least, like Frenesi, used to)?  Is  
> it a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?"
>
> Laura
>