Mike Ballard wrote:
>
>
> Washington can and should legalize all undocumented workers already
> here and offer more visas and Green Cards to those who have yet to
> come. In addition, Washington can and should make it easier for
> workers to come _and go_ freely. A lot of people would want to come
> here, work some, go home, come again, go home again, etc. -- if entry
> and reentry weren't so difficult.
This kind of argument (what in the abstract Washington "can and should do") is one of the political positions that makes building an effective left difficult. In so far as it is a kind of attitude that is pervasive among those who (in a friend's formulation) are _for_ but not _of_ the left it represents the attitude which left activists _must_ overcome if we are to build a left in the u.s.
The correct question is "How are leftists to bring the forces to bear to FORCE 'Washington' to do this or that?" If you are merely wishing by listing the things Washington should and could do, why don't you wish for something really useful, like dissolving the u.s. military forces or initiating a $15 an hour minimum wage and a 100% excess profits tax. Why wish for pennies when the moon beckons. As long as it is left to its own devices (i.e. to the political programs of the RP & DP) Washington doesn't give a fuck what it should or could do. After all, as someone said back in the '20s the business of America is business, and that is Washington's concern when left to its own devices.
And this is relevant, highly relevant, to the debate Marta has triggered. I have so much respect for Marta's work and for what, over the years on e-lists, I have learned from here, that out of that respect I am not reading her current posts at all. It is too discouraging. The disabled, or any other strata/segment of the working class can achieve its aims/needs only through solidarity with all other segments/strata of the class. Marta's current arguments clearly destroy solidarity and hence injure the cause of the disabled -- if fact, the cause of all the exploited, oppressed, and excluded. I can't bear to witness such a sad sight.
Carrol