Re: the next wedge issue

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:48 AM -0500 11/21/03, Louis Proyect wrote:
> What I said is that if Melvin made remarks at a branch meeting like
> he made here, he'd be brought up on charges. I know for a fact that
> lots of older SWP'ers, especially factory workers, felt threatened
> by woman's and gay liberation but they had the common sense to keep
> their prejudiced remarks to themselves. Sadly, it was only in the
> late 1970s after the SWP made its infamous "turn" that members'
> private thinking began to become an issue. This is what helped to
> destroy the CP in fact. In the late 1940s, as the witch-hunt took
> shape, they made a big point of hounding out members who might have
> had "weak" understandings of the woman or Negro question despite
> remaining silent on those questions in party meetings, etc.

It seems easier to attack sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. when a
movement is "on a forward march," so to speak -- a political movement
that has already begun to lose and become defensive (as in the late
1940s and late 1970s) is probably unable to confront what it must and
will confront without splitting itself.
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>