NY Greens nominate social patriot for Governor

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Press, Wednesday, June 19, 2002

The Greens? Man for Governor 
by Doug Ireland

The gubernatorial campaign currently under way is attracting very little
interest from the electorate?partly because of the uninspired campaigns by
the two Democratic primary contenders, Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo; and
partly because George Pataki?s reelection is not seriously in question.

Fortunately, there is now an alternative candidate whose presence on the
November ballot gives a choice to intelligent voters fed up with the petty
squabbling of brain-dead politics-as-usual: Stanley Aronowitz.

Aronowitz is one of a vanishing breed: the working-class intellectual. The
author or editor of 20 books?most recently, The Last Good Job in America
(2001) and The Knowledge Factory (2000)?Aronowitz is Distinguished
Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. But
he?s also a former steelworker, raised in the Bronx, who was an organizer
for both the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (now UNITE) and the Oil, Chemical
& Atomic Workers; he spent years as a community organizer and as associate
director for Mobilization for Youth, which was one of the largest youth
work agencies in the country and a flower of New York?s nonprofit service
sector. He also served as director of Park East High School in East Harlem,
the first postwar experimental public high in the city.

Aronowitz earned the nomination by appearing before more than half of the
Green chapters throughout the state. He belies the stereotypical "granola
culture" image of the Greens: an ebullient platform performer, he made a
point of telling the Greens that he was a meat-eater and not a pacifist.
("There are just wars," he says. "We have to be able to intervene
militarily to prevent genocide?and if I saw a reason to intervene, as in
Bosnia or Somalia, I?d be for it.")


full: http://www.nypress.com/15/25/nyc/nyc4.cfm

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org



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