I haven't read your original post, I haven't read all of this post I'm responding to. I'll take another look when I get my sight back, at least partially, in the next 24 to 48 hours.So right now I'm writing mostly in generalities (and on the basis of rather generalized experience from the '60s). You cannot win against sectarian leftist groups within an amorphous mass movement by writing "criticism" of them. Most of the people you want to influence either won't bother to read you or won't even know you exist or will see such criticism (even if perfectly true) as at best irrelevant and probably merely malicious. They want to _do_something, not engage in left squabbling. ANSWER is providing them something to DO. Nuf said. The rest is a bore. So if you want a large anti-war movement, and one NOT dominated by WWP, forget about WWP and see how you can build that movement.
In '65 or '66 there was an article in the New Republic (a wonderful journal at that time) about some anti-war mobilization, and a large mass meeting of some sort. I'm sorrty I can't remember any of the details or even the date, but it involved a meeting in which both SWP (YSA) cadre and SDS members were involved. The article said that when the SWP speeches got boring, the SDS people simply went for a cup of coffee. In other words, they ignored the SWP instead of meeting it toe to toe. That was the right target, and after some bungling, SDS (or at leas individual SDS chapters) learned to stop worrying about SWP and pitched into anti-war effort without worrying too much which "core" won out in national coalitions at any one time.
I can't see what I'm writing here so it's getting formless, and I think I'll quit.
Build a large enough anti-war movement and ANSWER will get lost inside it. Spend your energies fightting or criticizing ANSWER and it will thrive.
Carrol
Liza Featherstone wrote:
>
> carrol wrote:
> > In other words, Lisa, if you keep up on this tack, it will be
> > _liberals_, not _reds_, who will be turning against you.
>
> Yikes, I'm really scared!!! What a weird, ominous statement. I have no idea
> what "tack" you're referring to. When I have written about the anti-war
> movement, I have been criticized sometimes for being too harsh on ANSWER,
> sometimes for being too easy on them. I have been called a red-baiter, but
> also a red "publicist" or "cheerleader" who is glossing over the true red
> conspiracy. I have been criticized by people of many different political
> stripes; others, also of many different political stripes, have found the
> work useful. This is all GOOD. I don't care what people think of me
> personally: I just try to report on activism as truthfully and analytically
> as I can, in the space that I have, because I think that's of some use to
> social movements. Others do other things that seem to them to be of some
> use.
>
> Liza