Who else attends ANSWER meetings regularly, though, except WWP members and maybe some leaders of the organizations on the ANSWER steering committee: IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Free Palestine Alliance - U.S., Partnership for Civil Justice - LDEF, Nicaragua Network, Bayan - USA/International, Korea Truth Commission, International Action Center, Muslim Student Association of the U.S./Canada, Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Mexico Solidarity Network, and Middle East Children's Alliance?
At 12:29 PM -0800 1/25/03, Thomas Seay wrote:
>This is how WE used to do it and, having spoken with a number of
>ex-leninists, this was not particular to my group.
Unlike you, I've never joined any socialist organization of the sort that you characterize as "Leninist," because I couldn't and cannot see the point in joining one. I just don't see how such a method of recruitment as practiced by the party to which you used to belong and other so-called "Leninist" outfits has anything to do with Lenin's thought or socialism or revolution of any kind.
At 12:29 PM -0800 1/25/03, Thomas Seay wrote:
>>Besides, while we still have trade unions in the United States, we
>>don't have any mass organizations on the left to reckon with.
>
>Well, I would call ANSWER a mass-organization. I would call the
>NAACP a mass-organization, I would call NOW a mass
>organization....there are many many more
None of the above counts as a mass organization in my book. They are just leaders on the national steering committees + local formal and informal leaders + mailing lists. A real mass organization must have masses (say, at the minimum hundreds of thousands, preferably a couple of millions, given the size of the US population) of active rank-and-file members that regularly go to chapter meetings and participate in chapter activities, which none of the above has. Names on a mailing list cannot be equated with active rank-and-file members. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>