[Marxism] The purpose of a presidential campaign Was: I am open to be proven wrong.

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Jeff Rubard" <jeffrubard@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> All of these generated lots of negative attention from "neutral"
> elements in the press, setting up a situation where attention would
> be wicked away from concrete policy issues: hardly what you want if
> organizing people around policy alternatives is the main goal of the
> campaign.

I think the main goal of the presidential campaign at this stage is to
build the Green party and expand it's base.  The organization and
mobilization of people occurs during the process of building the
campaigns, with the speeches, the meetings, and discussions.  That
task is not done by getting airtime, but facetime and building social
groupings that learn to act together.  Then those connections need to
be maintained and nurtured beyond the campaigns.

The education and mobilization of people around alternative policy is
not going to occur within the media.  The media will cover those
issues AFTER we have organized and mobilized people and had an effect
on policy, or at least seriously threaten it.

You could have Jesus Christ come down from the heavens and attempt to
start a public discussion of policy alternatives, and there would be
no media coverage of concrete policy issues.  Look at Kucinich, who is
raising some policy alternatives us Greens like.  He is marginalized,
even without some behavior that you are afeared the "neutral" elements
will be distracted by.  For chrissakes, are we to believe that Dean's
campaign was really derailed by a war whoop?  Sheeeit.

I think McKinney is a good candidate for such a campaign.  Her filing
as a Green Candidate and her ties to the Reconstruction Movement is a
boon to the Green Party that we need to make the most of.  She
attracts a broad array of people to her campaigns and she is commited
to issues that are dear to the GP.

In the same email, but earlier Juff wrote:
> That would be the occasion for the sympathy I spoke of earlier; but
> I have no sympathy for her 9/11 conspiracy-mongering, and little
> sympathy for the Tupac Shakur bill (which seemed populist
> grandstanding at best). 

I think you are misrepresenting her efforts to extend the 9/11 probes.
It appears anyone who wants to investigate what happened, what the
administration knew, how contracters with significant ties to the Bush
administration and the intelligence community (which seeded Al Queada)
benefitted from the invasion of two countries -- is now a conspiracy
theorist, to be lumped togehter with the "it wasn't a plane but a big
cruise missile" and the "see the placed explosives firing" theorists.
That is just more bullshit.

As for the Tupac Shakur Bill, which was calling for a collection of
all government records relating to his life and death, that seems a
reasonable request for someone whose family has been pursued by the
FBI for their involvement in the Black Liberation Army and Black
Panthers, and who was under FBI investigation at the time of his
slaughter.  

I support it.  It's populist grandstanding if your conception of Tupac
is that he was just some gangsta-rapper, and you believe that hip-hop
is just a music genre.  Guess what, he was more than just a rapper,
and hip-hop is a cultural and political movement that we need to
welcome into any broad social movement to change this country.

-- 
Sincerely, Craig Brozefsky              <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
what a klon  - neko           http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Less matter, more form!                       - Bruno Schulz
ignazz, I am truly korrupted by yore sinful tzourceware. -jb

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