max, i never said it is not worthy of support - in fact, living wage campaign at hopkins won a small victory recently by making the president accept the living wage principle for contractual workers (janitors, etc.). surely, baltimore has a "left" scene, including the labor party of which i am a card carrying member (i have not got in touch with build, though).
but again, my idea was not that there are not any leftists left, but that the traditional institutional framework for left political acivism is thoroughly compromised, while no viable alternatives are in sight. that certainly holds for the democratic party -clinton doing more damage to the progressive causes, either by his ineptitude, opportunism, or deliberately undermining the left than reagan and bush combined- and i suspect for most european left as well. blair is clearly a disaster, as despicable as clinton, and both french socialists and german social democrats cum greens turned out to be co conspirators of nato imperialism.
in fact i do not see any institution that can even remotely represent the left on the political arena. labor party, while promising, is not a political player. tepid attempt to register greens in md during last presidential election failed miserably. upcoming mayoral election in baltimore is a bad joke to the point that no serious candidate is considering running and the city bigwigs only interest is preserving its political machine by any means necessary (including race baiting) than trying to avert the progressing economic death of the city.
as far as build is concerned i was not successful in contacting them after i read about their campaign in the nation magazine, and i heard an uncfirmed opinion that they are not particularly interested in contacts with the local leftists.
in short, i do not see any serious (meaning labor-based) organizing except the tepid efforts of the labor party. perhaps i've been "out of the loop" for some time, but that is another story.
moreover, i strongly suspect that the disastrous policies of clinton administration will result in repugs winning the congress as well as presidency in 2000 - which will greatly accelerate their efforts to dismantle the public sphere and further defund the left. i also suspect a wave of disappointment with the 'center-left' rule in europe, which will further swell the ranks of extreme right.
wojtek