----- Original Message ----- From: "Todd Archer" <todda39 at hotmail.com>
Ian said:
>To think things will hold
>together without a minimum of agreed upon self-restraints by any
>and all groups in message-strategy-tactics means we could be on
the
>way to repeating the mistakes that led to....Carter and Reagan.
That's a hefty cross to lay solely on the shoulders of "left mistakes". Why not got all the way back to The Russian Revolution and Stalinism while you're at it?
=============
I hear you; my use of those two was simply that reaching out to US workers and citizens can't assume they're going to know the long history. Thus, for outreach purposes, making the connections as to what was happening in the US body politique as the Civil Rights-Viet Nam-Nixon rolled into the era -which was an utter economic/political mess- that led to C&R seems an easy place to start for a society that is willfully forgetful of how US leftists have used collective action to engage and/or alienate their fellow citizens who are more inclined to apolitical behavior than knowing the minutae of left strategies-successes-failures of the whole 20th century. Assuming, of course, that we'd like get at least as big as those movements while avoiding their problems....I know especially now the damned thing's not repeating itself but it does rhyme and even though we gotta live forward, we can't help but understand backward [Keirkegaard]
Come on, Ian, that is a bit simplistic for you, no? I'm the intellectual lightweight around here; don't go horning in on my job, eh?
!{)>
============= Sorry I've been dumbed down from hanging out in the waiting room for jury duty all damn day.
>
I would say that, to a point, there has to be some communication
between
groups, as Chuck pointed out, if only to prevent people from
stepping on
toes they might not want to. But, it seems too much to ask of some
very
disparate groups to follow what at least some would call an
"ineffectual"
strategy.
Todd
==================
I'm all for the communication or I wouldn't engage Chuck on the issues. As always, I'm more than happy to be wrong if it helps me and everyone else that might still be struggling with how to proceed after 9-11 learn a little. For that I'm more than willing to simplify in order to re-complexify via dialogue. :-> [how's that for an almost neologism....]
Again, we seem to be at the "one group's notion of effectiveness is another's notion of counterproductive" stumbling block; that's ok in discussion, it's more problematic when it leads to a tyranny of structurelessness with regards to long term strategizing when-where it has the potential to unravel us--see above-- as more people become desirous of non-insubstantial change and I bring it up because we gotta look out for each other more than ever given the palpable grief, sorrow, anger and hope that motivates us. The last thing we want is Chuck and everyone else doin' the WEF gig getting their skulls smashed in because the cops couldn't navigate the difference between grief and anger. That means we have to navigate those emotions even smarter than they do. My guess is that calls for a greater sense of the need for ex ante consensus on restraints.
Ian