> I don't disbelieve this. What this is telling me is that the Republicans are more a party of the white working class than the Democrats - and the people are speaking with their votes and with their polling opinions. By the way, that Washington Post article is very good, I recommend reading the whole thing. The working class is going Republicans, and the upper class professionals are becoming Democrats. In the book "Left Hooks, Right Crosses" there is an article touching on this, which talks about how some rich suburb of pro-choice, gun control obsessed yuppies is becoming more Democratic. And my anarchist beliefs lead me to think gun control is very bad, and most anarchists I know agree. The NRA is standing up for us in this respect, as are the second amendment supporters.
>
> I'd quote more from the Washington Post article to reiterate what I am saying, but you can read it yourselves. If Yoshie were an anarchist, I might listen to what she is saying, but she's not, and I don't like the idea of someone who doesn't care about anarchism and tell us what to do. They have their own agenda. If they want more blacks or people of color involved with something they should do that. I'm too busy talking to mostly white working class people about class issues to run around recruiting blacks and stealing them from other left-wing groups. I'm also too busy to be actively involved in helping East Timor and whatnot. Other people are, and bless them for it, but everybody can't be focused on everything. I think "recruiting" blacks kind of goes against the anarchist mentality. The anarchist mentality is to form groups with others in your community who share similar concerns and ideas, and then eventually federating with others. Thus, since the US is defa
cto
> segregated, we're more likely to see affinity groups that are one color or another, and once in a while more mixed, together in a federation. It's representative. It's a reflection of society. You can have a group where blacks and whites are together and singing we are the world, but that is not a reflection of society. As I said before, if blacks and whites don't do non-controversial things like bowl together, or go to dinner together, or whatever, then the idea of them getting together and having a revolution together is absolutely ridiculous.
>
> That you're trying to tell us what to do, and that we're not trying to tell you what to do, I think is an indication of who the zeitgeist is favoring. I'm not tying your arms from going out and organizing whites and people of color together - go do it, if you want. I can't be focused on stealing blacks from other progressive organizations, East Timor, organizing a union, workers at a factory in Haiti, press censorship in Russia blah blah blah. I can only focus on a handful of things. If you think people of color should be anarchists, and obviously you don't, you think they should be communists or marxists or whatever, then go out and do that. I have only so many balls to juggle. While this stupid sniping is going on, that not enough blacks are in one section of the left wing instead of another, who aren't mostly because anarchists don't feel a need to "recruit" blacks to their ideas like vanguard groups or the Democrats and for other reasons pertaining to the federal
st
> ructure of anarchist communities, the working class of the United States is barreling towards conservativism, the Republicans etc. as those polls and articles I posted show. So you can worry about which part of the left blacks and people of color are in, I'll focus on that, OK?
I agree with much of what Lance says, but I'd like to point out that many anarchists work with non-political activist and community groups. This fact is not understood by leftists like Yoshie, who apparently measures these things by how many anarchists are in anarchist-only organizations. Some leftists charge that anarchists don't work well with others, but this is way
out of whack with reality. Anarchists are working with community groups and activist groups. I've been working lately with a tenant rights group in my neighborhood. I know anarchists who work with community coalitions and grassroots campaigns. If you listened to Pacific tonight, you may have heard my friend Jenka reporting from Chiapas. She's been doing alternative media work with Free Speech TV and Pastors for Peace.
I could go on and on, but this is why any comparison with the traditional left on the racial composition of anarchism is like comparing apples and oranges.
Chuck0
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"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free..." ---Utah Phillips