also, in part because their agendas were co-opted by the duopoly if they had enough wide spread support; because they were the target of often violent discrimination; because they tended to be short sighted regarding involving racial and ethnic minorities, most often using them rather than involving them when they did pay any attention to them; and for other reasons.
>As an old saying goes, opportunity has to be seized by her forelock --
>behind she is bald. Since American activists and organizers have neither
>a mass social democratic party nor any political party to the left of it,
>they are practically forced to go on their own, developing myriad
>associations focused on discrete issues and identities (many of which do
>not last very long); and since there are so many one-issue and
>one-identity associations that come and go, it's hard for them to get
>together and work out a common long-term political agenda and strategy and
>tactics to advance it. That's a vicious circle.
it's a downward spiral.
R
>>I thought that's why there was an effort on this list to articulate a
>>humane slogan for the left recently, in order to attract the attention of
>>a popular audience - against the time when there's some news of
>>revolutionary import to pass along to them.
>
>If you add up audiences of all efforts of individuals and organizations on
>the left, from tiny to relatively big, they would probably add up to
>something like the size of "a popular audience," but the problem is that
>members of the audience are not all politically active, nor are the
>politically active among them consciously working together to advance the
>same political agenda. "Everybody just rolls their own," as you put it.
>--
>Yoshie