Re: [Marxism] Our alternative should be an antiwar movement, not an electoral on

["Eli Stephens" <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin concludes a long analysis of the current situation, and the Green 
Party, with this:

"How to relate to those folks who feel betrayed by that, and others who
identify with them even if they didn't vote or only came to similar
conclusions after the 2006 elections, is where I think the left should
focus.

"Unfortunately, I don't have any clear ideas or proposals on HOW to do that,
but my gut feeling is that this is what the left should be about right now,
building an antiwar movement, and NOT crafting an alternative for the
November 2008 elections."

Allow me to share some ideas from my own experience. First, where can you 
find "those folks"? Well, a heck of a place to start is at Daily Kos 
(www.dailykos.com), which gets a HALF MILLION visitors a day. Sure, the 
CONCEPT of the site (and of Kos himself) is to elect Democrats, full stop. 
But out of a half million people, I assure you there are MANY who are into 
action, and who are (or will very soon be) disillusioned with the Democratic 
betrayers. Indeed, go read the site right now, and you'll see two posts by 
Kos himself on the front page expressing that very sentiment thanks to the 
impending betrayal on the upcoming war funding vote 
(http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/6/184413/0937 and 
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/6/174651/0976).

What can you do there? Once you "register" (just like registering for a 
thousand sites on the web), you can comment on what you read, or you can 
write your own "diaries" (posts). You can only write one a day, and they'll 
only be up for an hour or less, but that's still a LOT of readers, hundreds 
of times more than read anything here or on a blog like mine (Left I on the 
News) or Lenin's (Lenin's Tomb). And even a comment will be read by hundreds 
of people.

There's actually been an interesting development recently. In the past, 
virtually the only one who would even MENTION demonstrations, either 
approaching or past, was me. But with Sept. 15 coming up, not only have I 
seen it mentioned, but there's even a website, http://road2dc.com/, which 
was set up to organize "Kossacks" (pardon the name) to do ride-sharing to DC 
for the 15th. So there is motion in the right direction.

So that's one thing you can do. Stop preaching to the choir (on Marxmail) 
and go out and preach to potential converts to the choir.

And the second things you can do? Well, if you want to preach "building the 
antiwar movement," then you actually have to DO it. Join ANSWER, or Troops 
Out Now Coalition or World Can't Wait or even UfPJ if you prefer, or any 
organization which is ACTUALLY BUILDING the antiwar movement by organizing 
demonstrations and lots more. I work with ANSWER in San Francisco and I'm 
sure it won't be a surprise to anyone when I say there's an awful lot of 
work being done by a very small number of extremely overtaxed people. 
Demonstrations like Sept. 15 and Oct. 27 don't "just happen" and there is 
PLENTY of work to do.

I know some people here only want to talk about how what we really need to 
do is to organize more conferences to "democratically decide" (whatever that 
means with a voluntarily attended conference of a non-membership group ("the 
antiwar movement") in a particular place in the country) what to do next 
(e.g., where and when to have the next demonstration), but in my view that's 
an excuse for inaction. Does it really matter that much exactly WHAT is 
done, or is it more important (I say yes) that SOMEthing is being done and 
that we throw whatever individual energy we have into joining in the effort?

So if you agree with Joaquin's analysis of where the left should focus, and 
I do, there's really no need for paralysis. WHAT to do isn't really that 
complicated.

Eli Stephens
 Left I on the News
 http://lefti.blogspot.com

_________________________________________________________________
Get a FREE small business Web site and more from Microsoft® Office Live! 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/aub0930003811mrt/direct/01/


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism