----- Original Message ----- From: "Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus at accessone.com>
>wonder how many of them make less than 30K a year. who anointed them
leaders? dc
>is a swamp [max and chuck0 excepted of course] these folks need to tour the
>country more often and LISTEN to people; the east coast would not have done
>"seattle" blah blah blah......
Who anointed them leaders?: The millions of members of their organizations who elected them to office and continue to fund their efforts.
It is so convenient for folks who haven't been elected to dogcatcher to trash the credentials of those elected to union and other leadership. It's fine to criticize them, but after a while it becomes an elitist game by those good with the pen to validate their own right to lead through writing and talking, since those elected are so obviously illegitimate.
There is a clear power game by those whose major activism is media politics - in whatever its form, leaflet, writing, the Internet - to trash such substantive political leadership, since it gives such media activists equal right to speak "for the movement" with those elected by thousands even millions of folks.
I am committed to union democracy, but that is because I am committed to democracy, which includes respect for the will of that demos as articulated by its elected leadership. Respect is not the same as mindless parroting, since constructive opposition is a big part of democratic action, but mindless questioning of the credentials of such leaders shows a profound disrespect for democracy itself in the movement.
-- Nathan Newman
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Michael Pugliese
> Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 11:25 AM
> To: dsa; lbo
> Subject: The Next Agenda (left Democrat confab)
>
>
> Oh Oh, Arianna Huffington gave a blurb to the THE NEXT AGENDA:
BLUEPRINT
> FOR A NEW PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT. Looks like an update to the South End
Press
> book in '92 ed. by Chester Hartman and Bob Borosage.
> Chriss Kromm, give us all a report afterwards. Hopefully it's better than
an
> event I saw on CSPAN a few years ago (a launch of the book ed. by Stan
> Greenberg and Theda Skocpol from Yale Univ. Press, "Towards A New
> Progressive Majority.") sponsored by IPS and CAF. As the audience was
being
> panned, Eleanor Clift of Newsweek and the McLaughlin
> Gang was snoozing.
> Michael Pugliese
> http://www.ourfuture.org/readarticle.asp?ID=712
>
>