Tag: politics

RAMBLING HARBOR: Red Flags, Pink Dreams, and the Ghost of Karl Marx

So it begins again.

Out here in Rambling Harbor, where the fog rolls thicker than campaign promises and gulls squawk like pundits, I heard the old chant—Communism!—echoed not from a union hall, but from the gilded throat of a man who once sold steaks and bankrupt casinos. Trump saw Zohran Mamdani win the mayor’s race and called him a communist. Not a progressive. Not a democratic socialist. Just red paint on a dreamer.

It’s familiar. Every time someone feeds the hungry or dares to house the poor, the powerful reach for fear. They don’t know Marx from Mamdani, but they know fear sells. Say “communism” loud enough, and you don’t have to explain why the soup kitchen’s empty or the subway’s crumbling.

Trump says it’s “communism vs. common sense.” But if common sense means ignoring hunger, I’ll take the red flag and wave it like a lifeline.

Out here, we remember sovereignty isn’t yachts and tax breaks—it’s warm meals, safe beds, and mayors who dream in public.

And I’ve been thinking about words. Big ones. Loaded ones. Communism dreams of erasing the lines. Socialism redraws them more fairly. One says, “No rich or poor.” The other says, “Let’s make sure the poor don’t die waiting.”

We weaponize both. Call libraries socialist and bailouts capitalist. We forget the post office is a miracle, and roads don’t pave themselves.

Me? I’m just a poet with a busted radio, listening to hunger beneath the headlines and wondering what kind of world we could build if we stopped arguing about labels and started listening to mercy.

Out here in Rambling Harbor, the tide keeps rising. And I keep writing—because someone has to remember the difference between a dream and a distraction.

—Dan, still rambling, still harboring

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Clamshell Echoes: A Rambling Harbor Reflection on Seabrook and Sanctuary

There was a time when the salt air of New Hampshire carried more than the scent of low tide; it had the pulse of resistance. I remember it not as a headline or a footnote, but because I was there as part of the Clamshell Alliance, and we stood stubborn and unarmed against the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.

We weren’t just protesting a facility; we were trying to protect a way of life. The marshes, the estuaries, the fragile coastline — they weren’t just geography. And when the government said “progress,” we said “not here.”

My friend Ron Rieck, a pacifist apple picker with the soul of a poet, climbed the weather observation tower in January 1976 and stayed there for 36 cold hours. Alone but not isolated, he turned that tower into a lighthouse of resistance. I was supposed to go up there with him. That was the plan. But duty called me back to Baltimore, to Jonah House, where the work of peace and resistance and support was unfolding in its own sacred rhythm. I wasn’t there in body on the tower with Ron, but I was there in spirit, tethered by purpose and friendship.

In May of 1977, over 2,000 of us occupied the construction site. This time I was there. I felt the ground beneath me, the tension in the air, and the quiet resolve of people who knew they might be arrested but refused to be silenced. More than 1,400 of us were taken into custody. We slept on armory floors, shared stories, and turned confinement into communion.


The Clamshell Alliance wasn’t just a protest group—it was a blueprint for change. We organized in affinity groups, practiced nonviolence, and made sure our resistance was as disciplined as it was passionate. We weren’t radicals. We were caretakers. And we believed that energy should be clean, democratic, and rooted in respect for the land.

Seabrook eventually went online in 1990, but not without delay, bankruptcy, and a legacy of resistance that still echoes. The plant may have risen, but so did we. And in that growing, we shaped a movement that inspired anti-nuclear activism across the country. Jonah House, as the war in Vietnam ended, became involved in Nuclear disarmament, as Phil Berigan said. “Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.”

Now, decades later, I sit in Rambling Harbor and remember. Not with bitterness, but with pride. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stand still. To plant your feet in the sand and say, “This matters.”

We were clamshells—fragile, beautiful, and unbreakable in our unity. And though the tide has shifted, the memory remains. A protest becomes a poem. A moment becomes a movement. And a harbor becomes a sanctuary.

Here is a line from Allen Ginsberg’s Plutonian Ode: “I declare the end of War!” “I chant your absolute Vanity. Yes, you are pure Void.” “I enter your secret places with my mind…” “I call upon the soul of Man to arise and walk.”

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