<< Mat Forstater writes:
>There was a lot of talk on the list with regard to the BRC
>employing the term "universalist." (By the way, the Albert or Hahnel piece
>that said first there was class and then Black liberation came along in
>the mid-sixties obliterates 500+ years of African liberation struggles.
Then Yoshie writes:
>>I very much agree with Mat Forstater, both on the misleading use of the
term 'universalism' and historical amnesia that allows many to say, 'Once
was class unity, and then blacks, women, sexual dissidents, etc. came to
fragment it.' >>
just to throw in my two cents (maggie writes):
The labor movement has always been fragmented in the USA. Just a piece of historical trivia, the American Federation of Labor was formed by a split off from the Knights of Labor. The Knights had extended full voting and participation rights to women and freed blacks (though they still discriminated against Chinese workers). The AFL was formed by white, male, skilled laborers who left the Knights because they were insulted at these privileges being extended to women and blacks. The Congress of Industrial Workers was formed in the early twentieth century to unionize those job categories looked down on by the AFL: auto and other atomated assembly workers. maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com