> I don't know this first hand, but Solidarity folk who are involved in the
> Mumia movement report that the main problem with the Mumia movement is that
> lack of involvement from the Black community. The churches and other
> organized African-Ameriacn groups have not come on board. No dount this has
> left a good deal of room for sectarian left groups to dominate the movement,
> which makes it less inviting to religious and liberal support. But there is a
> chicken-and-egg problem that I don't know the answer to. Perhaps Mumia's
> radicalism or his MOVE association contributes, maybe these groups don't want
> to risk their respectability. I don't know.
The organized African-American groups and churches WERE on board 4 years ago, when an execution date had been set for August 17th.
My theory is that they dropped their involvement during the quiet years when Mumia's appeals wound their way through the Pennsylvania court system. Other progressive groups dropped their involvement too, because the situation wasn't dire for Mumia. It was during this period that the sectarian Left groups moved in.
I remember the coalition meetings from the Summer of 1995. There was an incredible diversity of people who attended. Representatives from sectarian groups would drop by, but only to sell newspapers or make announcements. I suspect that they didn't stick around because these groups were strong and thus not ripe for their standard takeover tactics.
There have been some interesting remarks made here about how to deal with sectarian nonsense at coalition meetings. Outing sectarian leftists and banishing them from meetings is probably too drastic. Instead, people should employ some standard techniques to make sure that the meetings are fair to all.
Such as: 1) Rotate the facilitator position each meeting. Help inexperienced people become facilitators. 2) Challenge any type of covert meeting manipulation, such as "speaker lists." 3) No leaders 4) Draw out quiet people and find out what they are thinking 5) Put time limits on how much one can say 6) If somebody gets up and starts making a speech, everybody starts yelling "What is the question?"
and so on...
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