Re: [Marxism] UFPJ Assembly, February 19-21

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

On the one hand Yoshie describes an assembly with vibrant discussion and votes 
on strategy and actions. On the other hand, an assembly run by a steering 
committee portrayed as increasingly narrow and bureaucratic. To the extent the 
latter is true, that would argue for convincing UFPJ activists who eagerly 
debated and voted on proposals, to understand the need as well to discuss and 
decide on UFPJ structure -- against the resistance of the current leadership if 
need be.

In such an effort of course cadre groups must lead.

Andy

-- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> wrote:
It must be said that Solidarity as a group does seek to support
actions -- especially mass actions -- that will by called by UFPJ (as
it has in the past).  The question is to what extent UFPJ leaders
(staff and steering committee members), the majority of whom are (for
lack of a better term) a little to the right of such political
currents as Solidarity, the ISO, and so forth, make room for inputs
from leftists who take a very dim view of the Democratic Party in
particular and the idea of looking to legislators in general.  Being
a steering committee member till the second National Assembly, I was
nominally a "leader" also, but it was clear that my inputs (as well
as inputs of like-minded steering committee members) practically made
no difference on the coalition's politics even in rhetoric, let alone
substance.  The changes made in the UFPJ strategic framework -- more
clearly focusing on the opposition to the occupation of Iraq alone
[compare the 2005 framework
<http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2676> with 2003
framework <http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=1731>] -- and
coalition structure (raising the cutoff age of who counts as "youth"
from 25 to 30 and decreasing the proportion of representation of
local/regional groups from 60% to 50% concerning the diversity
criteria for steering committee member selection; giving the steering
committee the power to add "five former members of the SC as
non-voting ex-officio members of the new SC"; and establishing
procedures to replace insufficiently active steering committee
members by appointment rather than by election) are sure to diminish
political diversity of the coalition both at the leadership and
rank-and-file levels.



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