Single Issue (was Re: [Marxism] [Fwd: For United Anti-War Action]]

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>


>  But people
> should get out of their heads any idea of current 'single-issue'
> national demos making the kind of political difference they did in the
> '60s. The date is 2005 and history does NOT repeat itself.

But alas, this is a myth. The 60s was never about single issues, even if a
demo got called around single issues. It was rather the convergence of
single issues, and the synergy developed around it (in particular, the
joining of the black Civil Rights movement and the more white anti-war
movement) that create the total movement.

Some of the most celebrated, and most infamous, events in the 1960s were in
fact, not single issue.

For example, Martin Luther King Jr got murdered not so much for his Civil
Rights work, which by the time he was murdered was pretty much the law of
the land, but for his incresingly figthing rhetoric on the Vietnam War and
multi-national class issues.

Even things such as Che Guevara's death became rallying points for a number
of issues, ranging from women's liberation to gay liberation to socialism.

Now, I wasn't there, but my parents were (my mom was actually one of the
organizers of the Che Guevara Memorial in Harvard, which became part of a
chain of events that unleashed the very important Harvard Strike of
1969(sp?)

More clearly, the leadership provided by a number of groups, in particular
the CPUSA, the PLP, the SWP and the WWP was key in many places, and none of
them were single-issue.

sks


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