At the kick-off event with the speech I cited, everybody said all the right things, but there was no diversity in the speakers at the press event further than including women. No Hispanics, for instance. How can anyone talk about discrimination and poverty in the U.S. without talking about Latinos. No gays either. No whites.
At the press event (I didn't go the rally; I watched some of it on C-span), Farrakhan was the de facto maximum leader. Obviously he's got baggage. He did pretty well shedding it. He's an incredible speaker, head and shoulders above the others. Said the right things and all. But he called J Jackson a great man. Then called Al Sharpton a great man, albeit with flaws. (ouch)
To me Jackson is a spent bullet. He refuses to organize anything except his own media appearances. Sharpton enlisted a gaggle of Republican Party operatives - or vice versa -- to run his primary campaign. Willie Wilson, see above.
Some good people are involved too. Cornel West, Julianne Malveaux. Fits and starts aside, there are grounds for optimism in general, since the overall theme is on organization, not manifestation as an end in itself. The vector is pointed in the direction of class as well as race. Practice has a ways to catch up.
mbs
^^^^^
CB: I was thinking the "thing" about the NOI is that it is objectively working class, in that its membership is very much working class. This impacts and comes through in the long term, as with the direction now. The thing about Malcolm X was that he was an actual criminal ,and then turned around to attack the social roots of his lumpenization. The gangs, actual lumpen, in Toledo ( see below) might be channelling Malcolm X when they unite to fight the neo-nazis. We may have an X dialectic goin' on.
Xpropriate the Xpropriators !
The police wondered on the radio why the crowd's anger turned from the nazis to the police. We're tending to fascism and the people in the street know it before the local police and the egghead politicos. The neo-nazis clowns don't even know fascism's on the agenda ,and they are in the street fighting phase. Better go meet in a beer garden and get your stuff together. Come on up to Detroit, and we'll throw a surprise party in Black Bottom for you.
Anyway, the speaking organization of the MMMovement rally was fairly democratic/republican or egalitarian among the speakers. Each speaker, even if prominent, had a rather limited time. I think Jesse Jackson and Ron Karenga got a little more than the average, but people were condensing their words a lot. There were lots of them, including a video cast from Alarcon from Cuba. The format was a speak out.
As far as weaknesses, in general, there is still, of course, way too much religion. But we can work with it.
These rallies are activistism political conventions. I got lots of talk and lit. The trips there and back are intense political discussions.
On the way back, we rode through Toledo Saturday night. We see that a self-acting, armed organization of the population ( leadership from the ranks) drove the Nazis out of town, when the Negro mayor gave them a permit to march. The working class spontaneously understands the fascist danger better than some leftists who are supposed to be injecting class consciousness from the outside. Nazis gonna march against Black crime. Oh hell no !