> It has been my experience that working with a variety of leftists
> from a diversity of traditions (from left-wing Catholics and
> Protestants to anarchists and Marxists, from feminists to
> Pan-Africanists, of different races, nations, cultures), as well as
> learning from the successes and failures of leftists in the past
> from books and oral histories, has been on balance invigorating, for
> all frustrations that necessarily come with political activism on the
> left in Japan and the USA, that is political activism with few tiny
> victories and many, many monumental defeats (for which, unlike
> some leftists here, I do not blame my fellow leftists in Japan and the
> USA -- in my humble opinion, most of them did what they could and
> fought good fights, while making many mistakes like all human
> beings). I wouldn't exchange it for anything. If I thought it
otherwise,
> I would just tend to my intellectual garden, like Candide.
Michael Albert gave a talk at one of the Z Media Institutes (the audio file should be somewhere on the sprawling ZNet pages) where he said that US activist groups over the years had a decent amount of traffic from newcomers. Attracting new people, he said, wasn't the primary problem. The main problem was retention.
There is some popular curiosity to hear something new. But something on the contemporary US left (or activists or whatever) does turn people off.
Not everyone, obviously, but enough to whither our base. Since Yoshie dismisses repeated first-hand experience from various posters as not factual in these matters, I'd suggest that the common sight of the revolving door of folks checking out a group and turning right around to slip out the door is the evidence. Of course, I've neither photographed nor cataloged any of this to form a case to be presented here...
No, the current state of affairs cannot be blamed on the US left. Apart from neocons (and maybe some anarchists), I don't think anyone seriously believes that. But there's a difference between dissecting the hegemonic ideology or countering the mainstream media consensus, and using either as a scapegoat for organizational weaknesses.
This 'love it or leave it' attitude from activists is the mark of a stagnant, insular culture. If the activist groups are not open to reform (or just lightening up, especially on the lifestyle regs), and newcomers feel alienated, they are compelled to leave. This is not the 'first cause' of activist marginalization, but it is one of the continuing causes.
-- Shane
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