Lubec, Maine protest on Canadian border (FDR's cottage via drug money)

It took MB and I four hours to drive from Brunswick to Lubec for our monthly vigil on Saturday. We got there early so did two hours in the sun, but cooled by a nice ocean breeze from just across the road.

We made good use of the buried telephone poll stumps to hook signs up to. Our friend and host Lynn had already attached her home made cardboard signs to many of the posts.

The border entry point for Canada was just blocks from where we set up so the traffic was steady for our entire visit. 

I made a game of trying to remember the out-of-state license plates as they passed by. I counted more than 20 states other than Maine. These are the ones I could remember: Connecticut, South Dakota, North Carolina, Wyoming, Vermont, Florida, Alabama, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Texas, Rhode Island, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine and Canada.

We had seven with us (six from out of the area) and Lynn who has lived in Lubec for 50 years. She is a strong activist in the community but does not get a lot of physical support from local folks - thus our trip to stand with her.

The reason for so many out-of-state cars was that just across the bridge from Lubec into Canada is a big tourist facility called Campobello - the former summer home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Every year during his youth and early adulthood FDR spent summers at Campobello. 

In 2024 MB and I took the tour of Campobello and I wrote the following on this blog: 

During the tour the guide was talking about FDR's grandfather Warren Delano Jr. who made a fortune, lost it, and remade another during his life. FDR's mother inherited the fortune and used the money to help pave the way for FDR to become Governor of New York and president. She also used the family fortune to purchase Campobello. In front of the group on the tour with us I asked the guide, 'How did FDR's grandfather make his fortune'? She whispered to me 'the China opium trade'. Then she paused and repeated the same answer loud enough for everyone on the tour to hear. No one appeared to react. I really respected our guide for being honest.

FDR's summer 'cottage' in Campobello, Canada

I knew this story about FDR's family fortune coming from the importation of opium from India to China, and getting generations of Chinese addicted to opium, because I read a riveting book entitled The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.  This so-called 'trade' led to the Opium Wars between China and the western powers during the mid-19th Century. 

As it turns out former US Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) maternal great-grandfather also made his Boston-based fortune via the same opium trade. The funds from this illicit drug biz funded the founding of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities as well as the first transcontinental railroad across the US. So it's instructive to reflect on the fact that leading American 'blue-blood' political families were drug dealers. Thus I don't have any trouble thinking of the ruling elites (including the slave traders from many of these same families) as criminals. 

This of course is a little known story in our country. The opium trade was sold to the American people 'innocently' as just the 'China trade'. (Think lovely art, dishes, silk and tea.)

During our Lubec vigil on Saturday we were pleased at the response we got from well over 50% of those driving past us. Honks, waves and thanks from so many of those in the vehicles. Once again we're see the growing evidence that the public is not buying the US-Israel illegal and immoral wars on Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and beyond. 

Now if we could just activate these folks across the nation to do more to help end this madness! 

Upcoming events:

• Hiroshima day protest at Bath Iron Works on Thursday  August 6 at 11:30 am. Meet in front of admin building on Washington Street in Bath. 
• Next monthly anti-imperialist protest will be held on Saturday, September 12 in Wiscasset on US Hwy 1 at the bridge just across from the famous tourist trap Red's Eats (coincidentally owned by a family named Gagnon). We meet at 1:30 pm. 
• Keep Space for Peace Week protest at Bath Iron Worrks on Saturday, October 3 at 11:30 am. Meet in front of admin building on Washington Street in Bath. 

Join us if you can. 

Bruce

 ~ Photos by MB Sullivan