<HTML>Art McGee writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Among those of us who are RADICALS, which includes those who are REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISTS as well as MARXISTS, reparations is only one part of an overall strategy for the restructuring of society. There are NO radicals that I know of who think that reparations are the solution in and of themselves. Only ignorant white folks, some of them who call themselves Marxists, think that the reparations campaign is a "misguided" or "potentially disastrous" political strategy. These people simply don't know what the fuck they are talking about, and they obviously have little understanding of the Black radical tradition, or contact with Black radicals for that matter. If they did, they would understand that reparations is a single piece in the overall strategic puzzle of societal transformation.</BLOCKQUOTE> I had not waded on this issue, and it may strike many as strange that I would do so now to come to the defense of James Heartfield, but this comment is so over the top that I can not help myself. There is not an argument here that someone could engage, but an attempt to silence with sheer vitriol and race baiting. Disagree with me about reparations, McGee announces, and you are an "ignorant white person," who doesn't know "what the fuck they are talking about," and obviously have "little understanding of the Black radical tradition." Let us assume the strongest case made for reparations to date, the one made by Randall Robinson, which speaks not of individual compensation, but of providing communities with the type and level of services and resources, in education, in health care, in economic infrastructure, which could provide the basis for overcoming the legacy of centuries of institutionalized racism. There remains the very real question of whether the best way to obtain such services and resources is a discourse of reparations. This is a question of political strategy which has nothing to do with a knowledge of the Black radical tradition, because it is not a question of whether the discourse of reparations has any resonance in the African-African community, but whether it will fly in the larger society. It is just plain obnoxiousness to dismiss this real issue with that kind of nasty race baiting.   Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) 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 --</HTML>