[lbo-talk] "Cadre"? Re: dalai lama in nyc

Tue Sep 23 09:58:07 PDT 2003

   The meetings I've been to in church basements and union halls in the 
last yr. of the local coalitions and groups affilated w/ UfPJ w/ 
Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist, Christian left pacifists, anarchists, NGO 
and union staffers, have been as frustrating in their petty posturing as 
any of the accts. I've ever read of intra-left squabbling. That tens of 
thousands were mobilized on the streets here, happened in spite of the 
sects who delight in publishing attacks like this on Nathan in originally 
Socialist Action (Gerry Foley there does have good pieces on Eastern and 
Central Europe, btw), http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Red-Baiting- 
AntiwarMar03.htm
http://www.mail-archive.com/leninist- 
international at lists.econ.utah.edu/msg02972.html (Martin Schraeder a 
Michigan SPUSA member, didn't know he was another paper member of DSA, he 
is an ex-Trot that was one in a miniscule group called the Marxist Workers 
Group, if memory serves. One of my Trotskyist friends, Adam, who I always 
ague w/ about WWP and the Hungarian Revolt, has worked with him)
http://www.mail-archive.com/leninist- 
international at lists.econ.utah.edu/msg02964.html
Hunter [Hunterbear]  DSA, Solidarity, SPUSA, CCDS -- and three labor unions
"Nathan Newman writes:
Crying "redbaiting" is just a form of mccarthyism within the left, an
attempt to shut people up when they raise criticism of policies.  Michael
has no power to take jobs away from Workers World members or throw them in
jail-- he is criticizing their support for dictators and thugs around the
world.
You may find the Soviet suppression of Hungarians in 1968, the shooting of
Czechs in the streets of 1968, and the murder of students in Beijing in 
1989
to be dandy service to the revolution, but Michael has the perfect right
(and I support him) in arguing that those in  the WWP who applaud the 
murder
of other leftists should not be considered comrades.
-- Nathan Newman"
http://www.mail-archive.com/leninist- 
international at lists.econ.utah.edu/msg02969.html
Down with this scum! Right on!
Henry C.K. Liu
http://www.mail-archive.com/leninist- 
international at lists.econ.utah.edu/msg02973.html
Pish Posh...Carrol Cox
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   The last meeting I attended w/ Gloria LaRiva of the WWP on the dais, 
beside Anuradha Mittal of Food First who was way too chummy w/ Gloria, "Oh 
the bourgeois media is all wrong about North Korea, "(related to me by Dave 
W. another Trotskyist friend who was in the SWP) LaRiva, Mike Rubin from 
Soli moderating, a good speaker from Soli who spoke on affinity groups as a 
model, well I let my friend, Tim Wohlforth, an ex-Trotskyist in DSA, relate 
that evening. I can't remember anything the FRSO rep. said. (I knew Mike 
Conan of FRSO well,RIP, http://www.freedomroad.org/presente/mike.html > Got 
to know him while working on a big conference at UC,B on the future of 
socialism after the the fall of the fSU, worked w/ CofC, Soli, ex-Line of 
March folks like Bob Wing, now of War Times)
Even the Soli member who spoke after Tim and I who had been on a Workers 
Aid To Bosnia caravan and said he heard many accts. then of Serbian 
nationalist slaughter, defended WWP.
   ------ Forwarded message -------
From: Tim Wohlforth <timwohlforth at earthlink.net>
To: Subject: DSA Perspectives
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 11:00:23 -0700

 I attended the June 26th meeting in Oakland sponsored by this new 
socialist unity coalition (Solidarity, C of C, SP, Freedom Road, DSA). 
There was a good turnout. I would guess around 50 to 60 people. Its 
purported subject was: "The American Enterprise: Socialist Responses and 
Roads Forward for the Peace and Justice Movement." However, I found the 
meeting very upsetting for two reasons:
 (1) As I protested prior to the meeting, it featured Gloria Riva from the 
Workers World Party (WWP) and International ANSWER (she made no effort 
differentiating the latter from the former.) She gave the main political 
speech. The only other party person on the platform was a woman from 
Solidarity who devoted her time to a defense of affinity groups. So Riva 
was the politics of the meeting.
 At one point she made the statement that Milosevic and Yugoslavia under 
his leadership represented "socialism." This was an indication of the 
underlying politics of WWP.  It was and is a Stalinist organization which 
has yet to find an authoritarian regime it didn't support, as long as said 
regime called itself socialist and was opposed by the U.S. (WWP supported 
the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring, the Red 
Army shooting students at Tiananmen Square, USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, 
Saddam Hussein's regime, repression in Cuba, Hamas and suicide bombing in 
Israel/Palestine, etc.) If I had not been present this remark would have 
gone unanswered. In fact at one point in the discussion a member of 
Solidarity, who had been to Croatia and Bosnia and knew of Milosevic's 
crimes, chose this opportunity to laud the WWP.
 The audience cheered a statement that essentially credited the WWP with 
single-handedly creating the peace movement. The truth is the peace 
movement would have shriveled up if it had not been for the formation of 
new democratically-run broad based groups like Peace and Justice. The April 
5th Coalition organized a highly successful demonstration in Oakland 
without any substantial ANSWER aid and totally outside its control.
 I spoke from the floor for two minutes critical of the WWP and 
International ANSWER.  No one else said a single syllable in support of my 
view.  And the leadership of the East Bay DSA was in the audience. All in 
all a shameful event.
It appears that the five co-sponsoring organizations (and I sadly include 
East Bay DSA in that list) have no clue what democratic socialism is all 
about. Otherwise they would not have invited this representative of 
totalitarian socialism to speak and then not confront this person.
 (2) My other concern is that the purported reason for the meeting was to 
discuss where to go next in the Peace and Justice Movement. Yet there was 
no discussion of the 2004 elections and the need to defeat G.W. Bush. Just 
as well as four out of five of the sponsoring organizations (plus WWP) 
oppose supporting Democrats. Yet the only possible way to defeat G. W. 
Bush, as the NPC points out, is by electing a Democratic President. Thus 
the need for a two-pronged campaign of supporting progressive candidates in 
the Democratic Primaries and then rallying around the chosen candidate.
 Of course it would be a total waste of one's breath to discuss this matter 
with these particular organizations.  They are part of what the German 
Greens call the "fundis." Under no circumstance will they ever support any 
Democrat.  Luckily the fundi base has shrunk since the Nader campaign in 
2000. Many former Naderites as well as unaffiliated peace activists are 
getting involved in the Democratic Primary fight.
 So what are we doing with these Neanderthals?  They neither understand 
democratic socialism sufficiently so that they can spot its "socialist" 
clothed enemies, nor are they up to helping out in what the left needs to 
be doing over the next year or so.
I say we pack it in with these people and let them stew in their own 
sectarian juices. We should turn our limited energies in the direction of 
the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club. There were 160 people at their last 
meeting (I had to miss it as I was out of town.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/a_washington_antiwar_demonstrati.htm
We took the subway to the assembly point, near the Vietnam Veterans 
monument. Standing in the shade, I saw a familiar face. It was Greg Elich, 
the activist and writer whose articles on the Balkan wars are among the 
best I've read. The current issue of Covert Action Quarterly includes his 
latest. Much to my pleasant surprise, he was accompanied by one of my 
favorite people in cyberspace, the fiercely revolutionary English 
instructor at Ohio State, Yoshie Furuhashi. We hugged each other and felt 
good about finally being able to associate a real human being with the 
phosphorescent dots on a computer screen...
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Greg Elich who like Jared Israel http://emperors- 
clothes.com/articles/jared/fulltext.htm
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2001-September/000332.html
does the slaughter of 7,000 in Srbrenica, http://emperors- 
clothes.com/indexe1999-08.htm
who attended a press conference of the neo-fascist nationalist, V. Seselj 
as part of a delegation of the 
http://www.jasenovac.org/JRI_files/naswyd/chronology.htm , " North American 
Solidarity with Yugoslavia, " and kissed up with the thug. But, then (see, 
"The Politics of Serbia in the 90's, " by Robert Thomas, Columbia 
University Press) Seslj was Milosevic', "favorite opposition politician, " 
so why not!

Michael Pugliese