Break the cycle of dependency - Just Say No

Brad Mayer bradley.mayer at ebay.sun.com
Fri Feb 23 13:15:56 PST 2001


The yawning gap that opened up within the "traditional left", along the battlelines of the Pacifica crisis, the Balkans War, Mumia, and finally Israel and the last U.S. elections is an objective fact. As such, it is the result of a => move to the right<= on the part of a certain milieu of left-liberals. It is not the result of a "shift to the left" on the part of "oppositionists".

So, let's be clear on who's doing the splitting: The Left-Liberals WHO HAVE MOVED TO THE RIGHT -like Audie Bock. (please excuse my repetitive emphasis, but I really want to hammer home this point as a fact). In this example, Bock split from the Greens, not the other way around. And guess what, people like me were nowhere around to 'cause' it :-)

I did not propose _anywhere_ that anyone should intervene in the Greens to split it. But in any case, whether a split is 'good' or 'bad' is relative to 1) the general political climate, and 2) who conducts the split. In the present case, the political climate has been reactionary for some time, and it is our rightward moving former "friends" who are doing the splitting. The _bad_ thing to do would be to not to acknowledge the historic character of the their split. And, yes, we will have to contend with many more opportunists such as Bock, and we have to carefully distinguish these from the equally inevitable mistakes made by individuals or factions of individuals. Here there is no question of a "split", on either part. This can only be revealed by consistent behavior over time. Instead, in these cases, tolerance and patient explanation is required.

"So even the "closet socialist" Greens in Oakland will not unite on your strategy Brad, so you have another split to have fun with there." Do you mean will _never_ unite, or occasionally will or will not unite? Nothing is inevitable or permanent in politics, which, BTW, is not my idea of "fun" :-)

All we "rejectionists" are doing is standing in place, refusing to move right. That is because we want to reverse the tide. Once it moves again in a progressive direction, the question of 'splitting" will be cast in a different light.

This is all really nothing more than common, practical political sense If we gotta have a slogan, let it be with political friends:

Parsimony in theory, generosity in practice.

-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
>Yep, let's have more splits and more divisions- that's the route to power.
>But then the Oakland Greens are the only Green party to elect a state
>representative in the country and they couldn't even keep Audie Bock from
>defecting away from the party once she got elected.
>And when Mark Friedman ran for the other assembly seat in the primary as a
>progressive Democrat, Greens like City Councilwoman Donna Spring supported
>him along with others in a "Greens for Friedman" organization.
>So even the "closet socialist" Greens in Oakland will not unite on your
>strategy Brad, so you have another split to have fun with there.
>- -- Nathan Newman



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