delinking does not equal autarky (J O'Connor)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>OK, Carrol, so what are we to do in the meantime, while we are 
>waiting for Godot? I mean, just now my political energies go into 
>(a) a Jewish group called Not In My Name that workers for justice 
>for Palestinians, including respecting their very petit bourgeois 
>property rights to their houses and fields, and their liberal 
>democratic rights to equality and freedom from deprivation of life 
>and liberty without any process at all' and (b) working to build the 
>Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, whose members do 
>things like sue the police for brutality.
>
>Neither of these activities require me to think, or even hope, that 
>there must be some kind of way out of this, although it might be 
>easier to stick with them if I thought that there was. Are you 
>suggesting that it's not merely pointless but actually dangerous to 
>give serious thought to whether there is a possible route to where 
>you want to go, but that it is nonetheless sensible and even 
>commendable to insist that whatever it is we do, we have to insist 
>that we want to be "there," wherever it is--and you and I disagree, 
>I will not, on where it is we want to be.
>
>--jks

Both (a) & (b) are exactly the kind of activities that leftists 
should be engaged in.  I for one am now working with local activists 
in preparation for a teach-in on Palestine, Iraq, & the Middle East 
in general (scheduled for April 18, 19, & 20 at the OSU -- let me 
know if anyone can come & participate; I'll post a flyer here once we 
have details worked out).  I'm sure most folks on this list are doing 
something like these or building unions or writing leftist tracts or 
otherwise taking part in some struggles on the left.

That said, though, at this point in history, there is no direct & 
visible connection between "here" (our political activism) and 
"there" ("there" being some kind of socialism -- details to be worked 
out democratically later).  What we are doing is important in itself; 
besides, it helps to educate existing organizers, recruit new people 
into political activism, create a new network of activists, encourage 
one or two individuals to take up socialist principles on a good day, 
and so on.  Beyond that, however, we can't do much except bide time & 
hope the tide will turn in our favor.  Even the best of political 
organizers can't conjure a mass movement out of a hat.

Yoshie