The "audience"? Bad choice of words I think. But I know what you mean. Still I want to say that only performers have an audience. Organizers must discover the people who are smarter than themselves at doing work in order to carry on.
In answer to Doug I can't resist a bit of nostalgia here from Steve Earle:
So come back, Emma Goldman Rise up, old Joe Hill The barricades are goin' up They cannot break our will Come back to us, Malcolm X And Martin Luther King We're marching into Selma As the bells of freedom ring
So come back Woody Guthrie Come back to us now Tear your eyes from paradise And rise again somehow If you run into Jesus Maybe he can help you out Come back Woody Guthrie to us now
_Steve Earle _"Christmas in Washington"_
Perhaps you are right, but I wonder where are all the people just hitting the streets and trying to talk to other people? Where are the people who will just get a job at a place like Barnes & Noble or some other retail place and try to form some kind of union, even if it means they will get fired? People and organizations used to do this. Where are all those orgs? The SEIU seems like the closest thing we have.
When you travel around the country a bit or even walk through Astoria, Queens you see dozens of people out, hustling, not for money but for religion. They are trying to recruit on the street. They have bible classes. They look after families, etc. They believe in something and they recruit. The left used to do similar things. They used to try. Very few on the middle class white left do things like this. The left groups I know that do it are mostly somehow connected with the immigrant community - "workers centers" etc.
We on left try, but it doesn't seem to me that we try hard enough. I used to know left-wing priests who quit their parishes to work in factories. My great uncle used to know people who with very little support would go to small factories and try to organize. Where are all these people? Outside of a few left-wing sects how many of us are actually willing to do that now days? Is it even respectable to do such a thing as to get a job in a factory or store simply to "teach", which is what the priest I knew wanted to do? Or would we look at such people as nuts? Briefly when I was in Chicago I worked at Southworks.
There were guys in the union who used to have reading groups. These were not members of sects. But smart guys who never could attend college, so along with everything else they did they had a reading group where they would read a novel. Every once in a while they would invite a teacher or professor in to give a lecture. Does this still exist or is it all only bible study groups held by religious sects now days?
It is harder for us to form organizations and educate ourselves and others than it is for a religious sect. I am not underestimating the difficulty. We are not saying, "believe in this and you'll be saved."
But it's not for a lack of audience that the left is so unorganized. It is for a lack of building institutions, commitment, permanence, and the everdayness of solidarity. Frankly, I think many of us see what is right, but can't follow through in our everyday lives because it would mean making too many choices that bring too many risks. Still, just some risky choices would do. I don't think we get dirty enough.
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