On Fri, 5 Oct 2001 21:29:28 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> Steve posted:
>
> > > > What
> >> > makes it OK to support strikers together with AFL-CIO
> officials but
> >> > not OK to work with Workers World organizers (among many
> others, mind
> >> > you) to get an anti-war movement going?
> >>
> >> You think the WWP is opposed to war? I have a friend who was in
> Tienanmen
> >> Square during the crackdown. He spent the better part of eight
> hours face
> >> down on the pavement while a Chinese soldier periodically hit
> him with a
> >> rifle butt. All the while my friend heard students pleading for
> their
> >lives and then being silenced with a couple of shots. Your buddies
> in the WWP
> >> celebrated this. That you can make common cause with these
> people is at best
> >> disgusting, at worst insane. Good luck with your "anti-war"
> movement,
> > > Yoshie.
> >
> >The WWP can be criticised for supporting the crackdown uncritically
> if
> >that was its position (I was in Taiwan at the time with no contact
> with
> >the US left at that time, and a few months later in parts of
> southwest
> >China). However, aside from Li Minqi and Wang Chaohua, not much of
> the
> >student movement was any too progressive, most were very
> ideolgically
> >liberal in orientation and downright opportunist. The claims of a
> massacre
> >occuring on June 4th are not incorrect, though as Robin Munro
> explained
> >carefully an dthoroughly in a Nation article in 1990, June 11th
> edition,
> >the claims of a massacre inside Tiananmen Square or that it was
> mostly
> >students who were killed were greatly mistaken. Munro, as you
> should
> >know, is hardly a friend of the CCP.
> >My frind Li Minqi, who did spend two years in jail for his call at
> Beijing
> >University for Chinese workers to rise up in 1991 (or 1990?) would
> agree
> >with this sentiment and he is one of the very very few of the
> Tiananmen
> >student leaders who has shown any concern for th e working class
> in China
> >since he arrived in the US.
> >Inany event, I divert again.
>
> I trust Steve's account with regard to the ideological composition
> of
> the student movement, etc. As for the WWP's position on the
> Tiananmen uprising, I'm not sure what it was either, as I only
> recently got to know the WWP, through the course of my activism
> against attacks on Yugoslavia.
>
> Lou Paulsen of the WWP says he has sent a subscription request to
> Doug & will be available to answer questions & respond to
> criticisms.
>
> Yoshie
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