> 1. Union recognition. (Once unions achieve recognition they are no
> longer sources of radical action. (This is nothing against unions: we
> need them. But we can't expect union activity to be a source of
> movement.)
But it does leave open the question of *what* the union does. Unions are supposed to fight for workers' interests, but there are many possible ways of doing so. This question, I think, now and then becomes a live issue in the union movement.
In addition, as is well known, it is much too hard to even get a union organized and recognized in this country, which is still certainly a live issue.
> All the other things that you may think are of greater importance won't
> generate a movement _except_ as they are used to expand movements
> which
> have their core in anti-war and anti-imperialism. Perhaps the struggle
> against the Patriot Act. You can't build a movement for positive things
> except as an emergent feature of Struggles Against. That's a simple
> prediction, not an argument about what should be.
>
> So the only way to argue against it is to go out and organize, and then
> come back when you have people actually in motion. I won't hold my
> breath.
I am somewhat (not deeply, I'm afraid) involved in the local anti-death-penalty movement. It can't be called a "mass movement" by any stretch, but it is involved in meaningful activities, including helping to support families of death-row inmates and supporting legal challenges. So it's not necessarily the case that you either have a mass movement or diddly-squat.
> Anti-War is the framework for everything else.
Perhaps it is in your area, but elsewhere there are plenty of other issues quite unrelated to anti-war that people are working on. They just don't generate large masses of people doing things that get big play in the media.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax