[PEN-L:11986] Re: THE FIGHT IN THE FIELDS (fwd)

[MIKEY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Friends,

I will be interested to see the Chavez film.  Chavez was a great leader but one
with significant flaws, flaws which helped to nearly destroy the movement he did
so much to build.  He was fanatically paranoid, never let anyone other than
himself make any decisions in the union, continuously purged his best staff,
practiced nepotism in a big way, lost complet control over the union's
financing, and got involved with some truly horrible people, including the
founder of Synanon.  I can say a lot more about Chavez if anyone is interested,
but it looks like his son-in-law who is now union president may be doing a lot
better job in building the union than Chavez.  One of the problems is that
Chavez is such an icon among progressives that it is hard to criticize him much
less get those criticisms published.

michael yates