Who Killed Vincent Chin? (was Barkley on WTO, etc)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Max:
>[mbs] In the context of the anti-WTO campaign, talking about
>racism/nationalism/xenophobia (RNX) is a distraction.  It is
>not relevant.  It's like walking into the middle of an
>industrial action and saying, what about the way worker
>Louie mistreats union maid Francis.  Louie may abuse
>Francis, but that's a different subject.

Well, we are talking on an e-mail list, not in the middle of an industrial
action.  BTW, the "Battle of Seattle" wasn't an industrial action either;
it was a symbolic protest, street action in service of lobbying, it seems
to me, from top labor officials' point of view.  It would be interesting if
organized labor decided to wage the anti-WTO campaign through industrial
actions, better yet, internationally coordinated industrial actions.  (As
of now, longshoremen on the West Coast might be the only union willing to
do something like that.)


>People are antsy about labor action because it entails
>at least temporary denial interests of other workers.

I for one think people (including you) are over-excieted, whatever their
respective positions are.


>IT ALWAYS HAS.  So counter-posed to concrete actions
>(shut down WTO), we are told workers should invoke
>their universal, internationalist rights.  But where?
>How?  Once again, it's a distraction, in terms of
>the concrete inaction it implies.

What will be the next political "action" of organized labor?  Top officials
lobbying hard while some workers calling up & e-mailing their senators and
representatives?  That will "neither nix nor fix" the WTO.

Yoshie