Peter Kilander wrote:
> Doug:
> >here - a left, broadly defined, that has rediscovered exuberance and
> >confidence, led in that by a maligned generation of young people, who
> >seem a hell of a lot smarter and more disciplined than us boomers,
> >despite all our nostalgia for the 60s.
>
> Well, I think many of my generation would agree if it wasn't for the much-
> maligned generation of 60s activists and all of those who kept the flame
> alive during the long, cold winter of the intervening years, the battle of
> Seattle never would have happened.
>
> Peter K.
>
> I'm sure I'll come back down to Earth sometime in January!
Yes. And it would be worth specifying the Anti-Apartheid battles. The various battles in defense of black political prisoners. The Central America solidarity movement. The battles over driving Shockley & company off campuses. The battles over the Bakke case. The losing struggles to build various "new communist parties." The defense of the Pontiac Brothers here in Illinois. The Anti-Gulf War struggle. The Jesse Jackson campaign. Struggles against the INS. Many local struggles (mostly defeated) to unionize. The list could go on and on, I would suspect quite a few veterans of those struggles were either involved in the Battle of Seattle or at some point recruited those were are involved.
In the '60s many of us didn't realize until afterwards just how important former or active CPUSA people had been in the struggles of that era. Without the CPUSA activities of 1930- 1955 there might not have been a civil rights movement or an anti-war movement. From various threads over the years on these lists, I gather that all too many people still don't realize this.
Some day u.s. radicals have to begin trying to learn and remember their own history. And part of any radical history is the story of the battles that were lost and how important those battles might have been later on. The tendency is to endlessly search for the mistakes we have made in the past rather than try to learn also from what people did even partially right.
Carrol