#103

[Nathan Newman]

Yeah well, not to go into internal Guild stuff too much, but it's worth
mentioning that students have been putting forward and WINNING resolutions
to hire student organizers every few years, and the organization has ignored
those resolutions year after year.  This included a resolution proposed by
myself and passed in 2001 mandating that the organization have at least a
plan to hire a student organizer at the 2002 convention-- a resolution
completely ignored, which was one more reason why the student leaders were
really pissed off. And the result has been the massive loss of student
membership once they graduate for years.

This is significant for how bad the baby boomer Left, which is who has run
the Guild since they took over back in 1971, has been in opening up
leadership and training new generations.  Instead, you have lots of
nonprofit fiefdoms dominated by aging baby boomers and a few left
institutions like the Guild with few younger members.  The left groups that
have younger members-- the ISO for example -- do so by concentrating almost
exclusively on that age group.  Genuine multi-generational left groups of
any significance are almost nonexistent, which speaks to a general disease
on the Left.

I could go off on a number of other problems leading up to the Convention--
such as an incredibly undemocratic attempt to amend the Constitution to
dilute the voting power of students and regions outside our five core cities
(one reason why in disgust I didn't attend the Pasadena Convention), but
they added to reasons why some of the students were pissed off.

A lot of this is typical inter-organizational wrangling, but since the Guild
is in many ways the largest and best-funded self-identified "left"
membership organization in the country, its problems have some relevance.

-- Nathan Newman

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Mage" <jmage at panix.com>
To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 8:24 PM
Subject: #103


#103 is fine conjunctural analysis. Thanks particularly for the refi
index on p.6. One story and one comment.

(story)
On the practicality of rebellious institutions in the United States
("Mess" p.7), this story from the  -also just received today - winter
issue of Guild Notes - covering the events of the late October
"Pasadena" Convention (the Lawyers Guild has the practice of not holding
its Conventions in the same city, and the practice long ago developed of
referring to Conventions not by their date but by their place  e.g.
Detroit where the Guild sent itself into the deep south to be there for
the black kids, or Washington where students interrupted the annual
Banquet, demanding the right of equal membership, or Boulder where the
Guild stopped just short of flying apart and admitted students and legal
workers as equal members).

There was to be a contested election for the first time in memory for
the Presidency of the organization. The vote was set for Sunday, the
last day of the Convention. Members whose flights left for home on
Sunday midday lobbied to have the election on Saturday. The issue was
put to the Conveniton on Saturday, which voted to hold the election on
Saturday. A busload of students attending the convention were on a mural
tour when the votes were taken. When they returned they were pissed:

"Saturday night, before the banquet, students gathered in a clandestine,
sign-making, organizing, and resolution-writing frenzy...student troops
stormed the banquet hall with placards reading "One Student, One Vote,"
"I want my vote to count," and "Murals Tour vs. My Vote?" We meant
business." -  according to Marilyn Onisko, elected by the Convention
co-Student National VP and a student at U of San Diego.

She continues: "The banquet attendees reacted marvelously to the
protest. In true Guild fashion and among wild applause,our comrades
stood up from the dinner tables and joined the protest. [newly elected]
NLG President Bruce Nestor, in a righteous and courageous move, formally
apologized for the voting fiasco..."

Another piece in the issue mentions that the students were only informed
of the 1970 Washington Convention precedent after their protest.

The student resolutions (including one to hire a student organizer) were
approved the next day by the convention. But at the disrupted Banquet,
according to a student account "[w]hat we did not expect, but greatly
appreciate, was the incredible outpouring of generosity by our fellow
Guild members, gainfully employed, who donated their money at the
Banquet to help fund the student organizer position."

Not mentioned in any of the accounts was that the first Guild student
organizers were hired in 1967 as the antiwar movement grew huge; they
were Ken Cloke and Bernardine Dohrn.

A good sign.

(comment)
"Kindness of strangers" sets out the current and capital account
question clearly. But while exchange is affected in all models
by this question, the political non-market causal nexus has to be given
at least equal weight. It is at least triangular now (depending on how
you see China) and in the recent past: 1. Japan made the banking law
D-Day event demanded by the US Treasury into something that looked like
ridicule of the US and of all the - to use Sakakibara's term - market
fundamentalists, and 2. the French (and EU) just let Soros know that his
crimes of the 1990s - challenging the political non-market causal nexus
referred to above - have not been forgotten and will not be forgiven.

john mage