lbo-talk-digest V1 #102

Gar W. Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Mon Jun 1 21:41:10 PDT 1998



> Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 19:34:14 -0500
> From: Katha Pollitt <kpollitt at thenation.com>
> Subject: Re:Abortion Litmus Test
>
> Gar Lipow points out that I strongly criticized the organized women's > movement -- NOW, for example -- for its wimpiness on welfare reform. This is true. HOWEVER, it does not follow that those with a "class"
line did better. The labor unions were just as wimpy on welfare, with a > lot more power. Where was John Sweeney? Where IS John Sweeney? In new York City, the Labor Council, led by Brian McLaughlin (sp?), who is Sweeney's right hand man, and who spoke at the Columbia labor teach-in, endorsed Giuliani in the last election -- as did Stanley Hill, head of the municipal workers local, District 37. The head of the transit worker's union said it was fine for the transit authority to use workfare workers, as long as no current union members were fired (he was later forced to reverse himself). And the big race organizations were also absent -- NAACP? NOI? forget it!


> The truth is, the people who cared most about welfare reform were precisely the middle-class intellectuals and social work professionals, feminists, left-liberal clergy and other liberal wimps that get abused

on this list. Class was no better an organizing or theorizing tool to fight welfare reform than gender or race. Maybe worse!
>
> best, katha
>

I think the problem is the separation of the different movements. No one responded adequately. I can't think of a single organization which devotes a lot of it's energy to constructive, useful activism, but which takes class and race and gender and the environment and all the other identities equally seriously.

There is a seperation between activists and theorist which is not helping. The problem is that some of our theorists are so contempous of activism that least one theorist on this list devoted twenty incomprehensible paragraphs to "deconstructing" the term "activist". Doug described what I think is a pretty typical instance of equal stupidity on some parts of the activist side :


>I was on a panel about economic development in NYC, and most of my colleagues were hot on stimulating small business. I piped up to say that for the most part, small business jobs pay less, offer few benefits and less training, are typically more dangerous and more volatile. For saying this, I was denounced by an activist for exhibiting the "paralysis of analysis."

I don't know how you create gender/class/race/enviromentally concious activist organization (let alone a movmement) that is not some looney would be vanguard (like every existing Marxist party in the U.S.) , or a wimpy amorphous pawn of the Demos (like DSA) or single issue org with ambitions of someday tackling a second issue. Especially I don't know how you create such an organization which is genuinely useful within a short time after forming, and which pays enough attention to theory not to wimp out on fundamentals, which is both democratic enough and fun enough to attract new members, and pays enough attention to human weakness not to constantly lose existing ones.

Love

Gar



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