andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> >
> > According to Carrol, even if Al-Amin is as guilty as
> > sin the left ought to
> > defend him as one of their own. Independent of
> > whether or not it's a noble
> > or ignoble sentiment, such an approach epitomizes
> > political tone deafness.
> >
> > -- luke
Solidarity is not a sentiment.
It is probably not impossible, but it certainly is extraordinarily difficult, to bridge the gulf between a detached academic perspective and a focus on building a mass movement. And from the latter perspective, solidarity extends both backwards and forwards in time. If black men and women enter into revolutionary politics (or even into militant reform movements) some of them _will be framed_ for various crimes, up to and including murder. And the case against them (unless the framers are extraordinarily incompetent) will be convincing. They/we have to know that our/their comrades will maintain solidarity.
As a preliminary, rough and ready, set of distinctions.
The academic keeps (and for the most part should keep) his/her focus on the past.
The journalist keeps (and for the most part should keep) his/her focus on the present.
Those who want to build a mass movement must see the past and present from the perspective of the future. Not how people have thought, or how they are thinking, but how they _will_ think half a decade from now.
(Bertell Ollman develops this in philosophical terms, but the activist who is worth a damn must feel it in his/her pulses.
> Not what Carrol is saying. This is a disturbing case
> about which there are serious doubts. In those
> circumstances, those who share those doubts should
> voice them. jks
Yes. I never defended the SLA -- in part because if honest, they were fools, and if they were hirelings of the police, as I suspected some of them were, they were also fools because the cops killed them anyhow.
Carrol
>
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