Question for Liza about Palestinian Solidarity Activism at OSU

[Michael McIntyre]

To Max's "so what" I'll respond with my experience at the one instance where I was personally present: the December 2001 regional student antiwar conference held in Chicago - at DePaul, more precisely.  ISO carries more weight on the left in Chicago than almost anywhere else, given the fact that Chicago is where it's biggest and, for a city its size, where the left is smallest.  "The smaller the punchbowl, the bigger the turd," as one comrade puts it.

The ISO agenda here was twofold: (1) to stake a claim to the dates for spring mobilizing, and (2) to create a set of regional steering committees for the student antiwar movement that ISO would control.

The meeting as a whole was under the firm direction of Kirsten Roberts, a second-generation ISO cadre.  At any given plenary, Kirsten was either running the meeting from the podium or running the ISO cadre from the back of the room while another ISO member chaired.  Unfriendly proposals - including one very sensible one that proposed unity meetings between these ISO-dominated conferences and the NY-based coalition of old-line movement heavies - were either placed so far down on the agenda that they could not be considered, or were voted down with the merest semblance of argument.  The ISO-led charge to preserve the movement's purity against a sell-out proposal to "mourn and condemn" the 9/11 attacks was one of the most sickening things I've seen in some 25 years on the left.  The elections for the post-conference steering committee were predictable exercises.

So, it's not just criticizing the ISO for being there.  It's what the ISO does when it's in the position it favors - a position to control the flow of events.

Michael McIntyre


>>> sawicky at bellatlantic.net 06/02/02 15:00 PM >>
mbs:  the thrust of your comments was against the ISO for
just being there.  The real question that would merit criticism
(or not) would be what they actually did.