Re: Alex Cockburn vs. Michael Moore

["William S. Lear" <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, November 12, 1997 at 22:08:30 (-0800) Nathan Newman writes:
>
>Except for a small handful of Americans who physically went down to
>Nicaragua and put their bodies in between the Contras and the peasants,
>your analogy doesn't hold.  What most folks were doing in the solidarity
>movement was trying to influence US foreign policy, i.e. its political
>makeup and decision-making.

Funny, you seemed to have snipped my example of Vietnam, and your
literal reading of my example completely misses the point.

I also thought that the point, first, was to raise public awareness of
the issues, and to raise the price to the criminals.  This succeeded,
forcing the Reagan clan underground because of public opposition.

>Many people would say (and I think this is Michael Moore's point) is that
>you mobilize the broadest number of people into opposition to the
>government promoting the policies you oppose.  Now, if you focus on issues
>that many people don't understand or identify with, you will fail in that
>endeavor and while you may feel good about talking a lot about the "most
>urgent" issues, you actually will have materially accomplished little for
>the Nicaraguans.

This is patent nonsense.  If that strategy had been tried during
Vietnam, the war would have been over.  A byproduct of "talking" about
issues is that you can educate people, and plenty of people were
educated about Nicaragua who would have otherwise "not understood" the
issues.

>If, on the other hand, you spend time working with those fired workers in
>Flint and build a strong progressive coalition to take political power,
>helping the Nicaraguans, ending the death penalty and a host of other
>issues will flow from addressing "less urgent" issues at the forefront.

I see.  And, suppose those workers don't give a flying flip about
peasants in Nicaragua?  Suppose they listen to their brave leaders in
the AFL-CIO?

>That doesn't mean that you don't spend some time on key "urgent" issues,
>from Nicaragua to defending immigrant fights to defending affirmative
>action (all of which I have been immersed in mysefl) but that if you fail
>to keep majoritarian appeals to broad economic issues, you will inevitably
>fail on most of those "urgent" issues.

And suppose the workers argue "But our jobs are more important than a
bunch of crummy, dark-skinned peasants."?

Anyway, I think Mike P. is right.  We both basically agree that both
issues should be addressed.  I just happen to feel that when people
are being slaughtered, actively, with the grace of your tax dollars,
your first priority better be to get it stopped---immediately, not
14 months or two years later, when a cozy broad coalition has had
time to gel.


Bill