Re: [Marxism] Yesterday's primary elections: Ron Dellums and Igancio de la Fuente!

["aaron amaral" <amaral1871@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/7/06, Javier A <javierunderground@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Mark Lause <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >  As to alternatives, the Greens are running some very good campaigns here and
> >there, most dramatically Todd Chretien, a socialist running for the U.S.
> >Senate in California.
> >http://www.todd4senate.org/
>
>
>   When I heard Todd speak, he fully attacked the Democrats and rightfully so, but his >class politics were superficial ...Todd does not speak the language of the working >class, both literaly and figurativly. So the Democrats "fear of the poor and minority >voters" are not instilled in any way in Todd's campaign. And its silly to assume so....
...

I was a little stunned to read Javier's analysis. Maybe he can better
explain where the failure to 'speak the language of the class' is
manifest? Without a fuller explanation I am both left to assume that
Javier is advocating a craven 'workerism'  (and in what context?) and
to wonder about sectarian motivations...

Here is an excerpt of something Todd wrote recently:

...AMERICAN HISTORY shows that social change always begins with a
determined and organized minority of people who set their sights on
justice. This minority is normally marginalized, ridiculed, repressed
or, for long periods, simply ignored.
Samuel Adams, Tecumseh, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Susan B.
Anthony, Eugene Debs, César Chávez, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm
X would each testify to this frustrating truth. They all labored for
years beside thousands of activists whose names we will never know.

All of them had to face the question that Martin Luther King Jr. posed
in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail--should we "wait" for the liberal
politicians to grant us some small part of our demands when it is
convenient for them? Or must we recognize, as Frederick Douglass put
it, that "power concedes nothing without a demand? It never has and it
never will."

Every successful social movement in American history has recognized
that King and Douglass were correct. "Waiting" is always just another
word for "losing."

Having answered King's question, this determined and organized
minority does its best to popularize its ideas, expand its
organization, sharpen its arguments and prepare for the days when
objective conditions jolt thousands, then tens of thousands, then
millions out of their passive acceptance of the status quo--and open
their minds to new ideas that only yesterday seemed radical, marginal
and dangerous.

For instance, right up until 1775, only a tiny radical minority
believed independence from England was justified, and an even smaller
minority believed in revolution as a means to achieve it. If Thomas
Paine had written Common Sense in 1770, instead of 1775, it would have
fallen on deaf ears, instead of becoming the most popular political
pamphlet in the history of the world.

This same relationship between years of patient organization and
education and relatively rapid change happened when the United Auto
Workers took over General Motors plants in 1936-37 to demand union
recognition--and when Rosa Parks sat down on the bus in 1955 to demand
human recognition...

<http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/591/591_04_ToddChretien.shtml>

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