This Issue of Cable Street comes out as the United States government continues shutting down, cutting off, arresting, deporting, firing, and destroying democracy, but the fight against the chaos also continues. In a direct line from the famous 1936 Cable Street protests in which anti-fascists fought with both Blackshirts and their police escorts in London’s East End, this year in Manhattan, on March 15, 2025, another protest of some five thousand people, barely-noted by the media, marched peacefully from Foley Square to Battery Park. We offer this issue of Cable Street to help combat the fatigue, depression, and fear of our fellow human beings brought on by this new world we inhabit.
Leading this issue are tributes for our beloved editor, mentor, friend, and literary colleague, Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, who left this world on October 3, 2024. Interspersed with their words are some of Chris’s watercolors from Learning to Use Black.
Following these tributes, comes the POETRY section, curated by Dana Delibovi and with work by David Cazden, John J. Dunphy, Natalie Marino and Lisa Bordeau’s poem to Martorell added by Bronwyn Mills.
Under LAURELS, co-curated by Bronwyn Mills and Lisa Bordeau, appears collage art pieces by Puertorriqueño artist Antonio Martorell, which include the haunting Flores para Sylvia and the hilarious Los Estados Unidos de Puerto Rico-The United States of Puerto Rico. The latter a fitting rebuttal to this administration’s fiddling with the map of the Americas.
FICTION holds a short story by Olivia Ross, “The Old Man Waiting,” in which each movement of the old man’s morning routine in the country, alone, are carefully detailed to reveal a tender story of grief and connection.
Under HISTORICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION is the latest installment of this ongoing series, “Hermann Klemm: the Vanished Publisher,” by Tobias Meinecke & Eric Darton.
PORTFOLIOS 1 and 2, have art works by a sister and brother, Gail Elizabeth Williams and Tony Williams, who reveal their very different lives and art styles. Coming out of rough childhoods in Bed-Stye, they each became artists and he a University Professor and she a lawyer.
ESSAYS begins with two lyric essays, “Days of Reckoning” by Ian C. Smith, Ancestry and Last Garden. The next essay was written by me just before this administration’s executive order to eliminate funding for libraries. “MISHA: A Man in Search, A Personal Reflection on Dance Division Fellows Project” looks at an event at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts that illustrates some of the importance of libraries, archives, and art. Following this is Eric Darton’s essay “Ropelore,” a fanciful rendering of the work of ropemakers in “fabulous” neighborhoods with lively nightlives.
In the section INVOCATION is an excerpt from Consuelo: An Ofrenda, “A Ghost and Her Amanuensis” by Raphael Rubinstein, the author’s attempt to reconstruct his mother’s life.
Under THE DAY / TODAY, comes David Sullivan’s introduction to Troublemaker, part I. This clear-sighted writing about his 1960s high school radical protests is recreated from his memories and his personal archives. And, by the way, one of his cohorts was our rebellious editor, Eric Darton.
There are also INSIGHTS, REMARKABLE READS, and VIVA! Just some of the offerings in this issue of Cable Street Issue 8. Remember, go for the beauty, truth, and joy. Help others.
—Jan Schmidt for the editors
Ghosts of Cable street – The men they couldn’t hang
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