>Yoshie Furuhashi:
>> ...
>> It is always the case, whenever organized blacks take actions on
>> their own behalf, that they get accused by "white moderates" for
>> "playing into the hands of the Right."
>> ...
>
>But this was not _my_ criticism. I am not qualified to be a
>critic of political tactics, for one thing. My uninformed
>guess is that there is no objective evidence whatever that
>the students are "playing into the hands of the Right"; I
>think it is probable that by drawing attention to David
>Horowitz's clown show, and especially to its race-baiting
>and racism-provoking aspects, they have drawn attention to
>the issue of reparations in general and made its opponents
>look bad by associating them with Horowitz, which seems to be
>what they want to do. As far as I know, their liberal critics
>here have not presented a shred of evidence to back up their
>assertions that the students' activities were counter-
>productive; it's been all talk. But in any case the selection
>of tactics is something for the people actually engaged in
>literal, concrete struggle to decide upon, not a guy writing
>theory on a mailing list.
>
>I'm asking people to look down the road and see if it's the
>one they want to take, based on my idea of where it leads.
>I think use of force, justified or not, home-grown or through
>the State, American or French, may be of very limited value;
>may, in fact, give us more of the same at a high price.
>My criticism is from the Left, not the Right.
I don't think I have anything about which I disagree with you, Gordon, on this topic (in fact, I like your opinions on many other issues as well). I simply used your post to return to the question of direct action (as opposed to state action), not to suggest that we have disagreement. By direct action, I don't mean use of force (except in war, self-defense, etc.); direct actions by leftists are non-violent in the USA today, for obvious reasons. I'm concerned with less this particular case of direct action at Brown than the oft-heard rhetoric of "playing into the hands of the Right" in general. This type of controversy is not new, & we'll hear it again, with a different event as a trigger.
You probably recall the Hecklers at the OSU on CNN:
***** U.S. policy on Iraq draws fire in Ohio
...February 18, 1998 Web posted at: 9:01 p.m. EST (0201 GMT)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CNN) -- The Clinton administration's plan to launch a military strike on Iraq ran into plenty of flak in the American heartland Wednesday.
At a town meeting held in St. John Arena at Ohio State University and aired exclusively on CNN, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger encountered a noisy, opinionated crowd and considerable opposition to another war with Iraq.
Albright was drowned out at one point by a group chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your racist war," as she tried to explain U.S. policy to the audience of 6,000.
The heckling became so intense at one point that Albright interrupted CNN's Judy Woodruff and said, "Could you tell those people I'll be happy to talk to them when this is over. I'd like to make my point."
Similar outbursts greeted Cohen and Berger as they laid out again a U.S. position that is familiar to those who have followed the building crisis in the media....
<http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/18/town.meeting.folo/> *****
Our heckling -- which local liberals & conservatives criticized then & later as evidence of our "lack of respect for free speech," etc. -- was much more effective than polite questions with no disruptions would have been. People all over the world heard it. I'd like LBO-talkers to remember that we were just *a minority* at this fake "town meeting," unsupported by the rest of the audience who probably hated us temporarily for being loud, disrespectful, & generally obnoxious, even aside from our criticisms -- inside & outside the St. John Arena -- of U.S. foreign policy. So, my message to the Brown student activists is, "Don't be afraid of being a minority that alarms the majority. You may succeed, you may fail, but don't let others cow you into submission to what is acceptable to the proverbial general public. We always start as a very small minority."
Yoshie