>Subject: Jack Smith: Reporter for Workers World?????
>Well, I believe that I now know why this list's Jack
>Smith holds opinions tilted in favor of WWP/IAC
>version of the A20 march. It's true that he didn't
>present himself as an independent activist but neither
>did he tell us that he reports for the Workers World
>Party newspaper or the IAC. Check out these articles
>by Jack A Smith and soon you too will be singing
>.."has anybody seen, my ole friend Sam Marcy.."
The article in question above (Is Colombia Another Vietnam?) was a reprint from the Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter, which I write and edit for activists in New York’s Hudson Valley. I wrote another article specifically for WW, however, a few years ago on the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. I’ve been fighting for peace and socialism for some 50 years, including 25 years at the Guardian newspaper. I am also a supporter of ANSWER, IAC and WWP, and proud of it. I believe these groups, as small and ill-funded as they are, have many accomplishments to their credit. I hate war, and am thus particularly impressed in recent years by the IAC’s role in building opposition to Bill Clinton’s war against Yugoslavia, the bombings of Iraq and, as part of ANSWER, it’s mass mobilizations against George Bush’s war on terrorism.
On another issue, I think that left sectarianism is becoming an increasingly serious problem within the U.S. movement. It seems, at times, that some on the left deliver their main blow not against imperialism or the ruling class, but against others on the left with whom they disagree. The article on the April 20 event that I wrote for the Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter, which I posted on this list, was a attempt to put forward a point of view on an important development for the left and antiwar movements. I had expected it might elicit some serious comment and criticism which could possibly result in a beneficial exchange of views. Instead, most of what it seems to have generated on this list is vulgarity, immature put-downs, a speculation about my view of the Hungarian revolution, and now the above attempt to expose me as some kind of red spy seeking to dupe the innocent. This is no way to build the left, but that hardly seems to matter.
Jack A. Smith