[lbo-talk] Where Do Leftists Live in the USA?

[Michael Dawson]

Yoshie, you are a broken record, and the recording is not often listenable.
You take your own opinions as received political axioms, and you have the
most stilted, unimaginative view of building social movements I've ever
seen.  Every successful social movement in human history has refused to cast
any aspersions on voting, which is a sacred, indispensable, and hard-won
human right.  Every successful social movement in human history has also had
non-sectarian leaders who had a profound sense of the flow of history and
strategic action and reaction to world news and mass media.  You, meanwhile,
renounce voting as a waste of time and pretend like there is some mass
movement going on that we all ought to be working 40 hours a week for.
There are interest groups galore out there, none of which are anywhere close
to having the internal or external elements needed to catch fire and become
mass movements.  Working for them is fine and dandy, but why don't you stop
and do a little thinking for a change?  And just stop dumping on voting!

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Yoshie Furuhashi
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 10:20 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Subject: [lbo-talk] Where Do Leftists Live in the USA?

The majority of American voters -- about 73% of them -- live in 
one-party states: only "27 percent of Americans live in TV markets 
where campaign ads are airing," i.e., in the battleground states, 
according to Marc Fisher ("No Ads, No Visits, No Contest," October 
21, 2004, p. B1, 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50120-2004Oct20.html>).

Leftists (of whatever variety) are even more disproportionately 
concentrated in one-party states than Americans in general are. 
Moreover, most leftists live in *left-leaning urban areas* like New 
York City, Chicago, and the Bay Area, most often in *states dominated 
by the Democratic Party* like New York, California, and Illinois.

That means that most leftists should prioritize social movements over 
electoral politics even in election years, because they live in areas 
where their votes do not easily make or break electoral fortunes of 
the Democratic and Republican Parties in the presidential election, 
and, if they do get involved in electoral politics, they should be 
building the Green Party (or any other party on the left that they 
choose to support) against the Democratic Party establishment at both 
the local and national levels.
-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: 
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, 
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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