It is simple: I did what I thought would be the right thing to do, and that is why I will continue to do it. It is not particularly unusual: a lot of people are doing the same thing here in Brooklyn and NYC. One of the reasons why I feel strong kinship with Yoshie, despite our differences on this and other questions, is that I know she is doing the same thing. I am sure that there are others here, too, who have not pronounced what they were doing, but simply did it. Why should anyone have to announce it?
I was not about to offer what I did as a set of credentials in this discussion here. I did not do it to prove myself to you, or to anyone else on LBO-Talk that I have fought over these issues. And I know that I do not need to prove myself to a Max or a Nathan, or even to a Todd, despite our disagreements. I actually considered saying nothing, but I was not about to let one more misrepresentation hang in the air like that. That I did these acts proves nothing, positive or negative, about the argument I have made here. That the question was posed to me, and no one else, was clearly an insinuation that someone who insisted upon respecting the memory of the dead would not care about Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans, and I simply could not let it go unanswered.
There is, at least for me, a world of difference between solidarity with folks who express genuine sorrow about what took place and want to address it, as the Arab-Americans of Brooklyn did, and those for whom this is simply one more opportunity to tell a very old tale about the completely evil nature of America, whether it be called American imperialism or the Great Satan. That is, I say again, a denigration of the human loss and suffering that has taken place, and an insult to the dead. This is a fundamental dividing question for me. It is not hard to go to an Arab-American vigil where you do not hear Chomskyian apologetics, or talk of blows against American imperialism, but grief for the dead. It is not hard to look after Arab-American and Moslem American friends and neighbors, when they first thing they want to do is look after you. It is not hard to work to ensure that New York remains a city where everyone is welcome, when all the people here, including Arab-Americans, are seeking to help each other, not cast blame.
There is no point in answering any of these questions. You have decided that someone who takes the position I have, or Max has, is a Clinton loving, Horowitz fellow travelling fascist. One can not dispute the thesis that American is entirely evil without being accused of saying that it is entirely good and without blame. Since I reject that Manichean world view, and I deny that it is entirely evil, I must believe it is entirely good. To that end, one can even accuse me of ignoring an issue which I have consistently raised the most here, even in the last few days: that America was wrong, deeply wrong, for not having intervened in Rwanda to stop the genocide. If that is the level of intellectual honesty, no simple honesty, in the discussion, what type of response could I make to those questions that would not simply be another reason for misrepresentation and distortion.
I suppose the dynamics of this exchange on LBO-Talk has been such that I have not fully laid out all of my thinking on the subject. Let me finish, then, with this e-mail I wrote for another list.
>Subj: A Response To Peter Waterman: There Are Contexts, and There Are
>Contexts
>Date: 09/17/2001 12:51:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>From: LeoCasey
>To: LABOR-L at YORKU.CA
>
>
>For those of us who are American democrats, in the deepest and most
>profound sense of the word, the tasks before us now are this:
>
>1. Justice for the Innocent Dead and Wounded.
>Those responsible must be found, tried and punished for this horrific
>crime. The use of force and violence in this process must not take more
>innocent lives. It must be directed solely toward terrorist organizations
>and the states supporting those terrorist organizations, and it must have
>the purpose of undermining their capacity to commit further such deeds.
>This is not a peace or anti-war movement in the classic sense of the term:
>we are not saying do nothing in the face of an act of war that took so
>much innocent life. That would be wrong, and we would not be listened to
>by the American people. The issue before us is not whether action will be
>taken, but rather, what action will be taken.
>
>2. Defend America's Most Vulnerable
>Every effort must be taken to defend the citizens of America who are of
>Arabic descent and of the Islamic faith from bigotry and violence. We must
>say what the mayor of our city, to the grateful astonishment of so many of
>us, said: to scapegoat and attack people on the basis of their race and
>religion is the very same as what the terrorists did. It is important to
>note here that unlike what the US did Japanese-Americans in W.W. II, our
>political and community leaders are speaking out against such actions, and
>promising to prosecute anyone who commits them. Here in NYC, where we have
>many Arab-American and Islamic students in our schools [we are an
>international city, and were attacked in part because of our embrace of
>every race, religion and sexual orientation], the UFT has been working
>with the Board of Education to ensure that these students are safe and
>made to feel part of the grieving community. If we can do it, and lead in
>that regard, certainly the rest of the countrt can follow. [Winsome and I
>have called our Arab and Islamic friends in Brooklyn, just to make sure
>that they are OK, and to let them know they can call upon us.]
>
>3. Defend Civil Liberties and Freedom
>We must fight any attempt, out of panic, to restrict genuine political and
>personal freedoms. We must distinguish between what is convenience and
>what is freedom. Our lives will become a great deal more inconvenienced,
>in order to protect life. But to have to wait 3 hours to take an airplane
>flight, to have undergo severe searches before flying, to no longer be
>able to purchase tickets before we fly: all of that is convenience, and
>can be sacrificed for safety. What can not be sacrificed is freedom of
>speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. What can not be
>sacrificed is due process of law. What can not be sacrificed is equality
>before the law.
>
>Those have to be our immediate concerns. In the long term, the only way to
>solve the problem of terrorism is a movement for global justice and global
>democracy. But we have to enure that there is a long term to do that.
>Insofar as your 'contextualization' is meant to draw us to that task, I do
>not disagree; but that task can not be substitute, at least here, for what
>we must do now. To say that only global justice is the solution should not
>be a new version of the old, dead slogan that only socialism is the
>solution. On the international stage, perhaps the most important immediate
>task is to keep Sharon from destroying the Palestinian Authority. We can
>not hope that he would move forward the peace process in Israel and
>Palestine, but we must insist that he does not destroy it.
>
>But there is another type of "contextualization," a moral as opposed to a
>political contextualization. It is meant to diminish the gravity of the
>crime that has been visited upon us by invidious comparison. I have been
>-- and will continue to be -- a critic of much of what my government has
>done in the world, as have many of us here. Yes, it has taken innocent
>life, and just as often, failed to do what it could do to save innocent
>life. It deserves condemnation for what it has done wrong, but also
>support for what it has done right. But at this point, and in this
>context, when the first thing people can say is that the American has done
>this or that, the message is that the 'context' is a justification for
>what was done. There is no 'context' which even remotely justifies what we
>have experienced. As I said in my first letter, as long as I can speak and
>write, I will challenge such justifications as desacrations of the dead.
>
>And one more thing must be said here about America's role in the world. I
>have spent all of the adolescent and adult time of my 48 years here on
>this planet fighting to stop my government from doing the wrong things,
>and trying to make it do the right things. Before I was even old enough to
>vote, I was arrested for civil disobedience against the Vietnam War. But I
>must say that some who have been on that same path with me have lost their
>way. When I open today's New York Times and read how Ramsey Clark is
>shuttling between Tanzania, where he is defending Rwandan Hutus on trial
>for genocide against Rwandan Tutsis, and Belgium, where he is defending
>Milosevic as he goes on trial for genocide against Bosnian Serbs and
>Albanian Kosovars, I can only wonder where he will find the time in his
>schedule to defend those who committed these terrible deeds. He -- and
>others, including Chomsky -- have become so fixated on the US as a source
>of evil in the world, that they have lost their moral compasses, and will
>forgive or diminish any outrage, so long as it is committed in the name of
>striking a blow against US imperialism. That is the nature of Vladimir's
>and Aaron's posting to this list. They do not speak for me, and they are
>no comrades of mine.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
.