On one hand, much of what many activists (including myself) do on foreign policy and federal policy -- from writing to demonstrating -- may be called "bearing witness," i.e. bearing witness to injustice. The situation is better on local issues, such as supporting fellow workers on strike, winning local elections, defeating anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives, and so on, but getting involved in a laundry list of issues is very time-consuming and doesn't easily give you a sense that you are connected to other people nationwide working on the same project with a vision of human liberation.
On the other hand, I have always been profoundly dissatisfied with bearing witness. So are most Americans, I believe. More people would get involved in politics if they thought they could make a practical difference on big issues that matter to them, if they believed that they had a good chance of changing the nation.
What we need, I think, is a critical mass of leftists getting together and coming up with a medium-term strategy that clearly charts a path to power, connecting the local to the national and global, ideally without forming a traditional "political party." The path thus charted may turn out to be a wrong one, but the process of charting that together in itself would be productive.
> > Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other religions do not come in a
> > single variety -- there are a wide variety of contradictory forces in
> > each religion.
>
> But most posit the existence of a creator god which I think leads to
> so many of the problemn with their adherents.
Religions of the Book, if interpreted most imaginatively in a way that is in keeping with modernity, aren't necessarily a problem -- they can be a source of strength in a trying time. Creative interpretation is what most faithful of any religion on the Left (or Right or Center for that matter) actually do. Most of the times, people interpret whatever religion they believe in to fit their lives and political beliefs, not the other way around. They just zero in on the parts of the sacred texts that speak to them and chuck the rest. That's what Marxists do with Marx's and other leftists' works, too. :->
> > Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families
> & Relationships
>
> I like this vision as well. I often wonder if the push for same-sex marriage
> will help with this agenda since I believe that heterosexuals will go to the
> wall to prevent queers from marrying (present company excepted).
I agree with you. Gay marriage itself has suffered numerous political and legal setbacks, but in the course of debates on and activism about it, more and more people -- even some on the Right -- have come out for civil union, equal right to employment, etc.
> Ideally, a person should be able to desiginate anyone they want as the
> recipient of their benefits, both during their life and after it. All relationships
> entered into by adults giving their informed, uncoerced consent shoud be
> honored.
Yes, friendship and other chosen non-sexual/non-biological relationships should be treated the same way as marriage (chosen and sexual) and kinship (unchosen and biological) relationships. That would expand our freedom. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>