> -I agree with you, but Nathan wants us to rely on Democratic
> -legislators instead on courts, and I doubt that results would be any
> -better, as things stand now, as we have no militant mass movement (on
> -any front -- labor, feminist, disability, environmental, civil
> -liberties, or whatever) today.
> -Besides, under capitalism, it seems
> -to me it's impossible to have mass movements (even when they arise)
> -perpetually engaged and energized. Individual burnouts are
> -inevitable under the circumstances, and therefore mass movements come
> -and go -- and mostly stay gone for a long time, punctuated by periods
> -of upsurges. What are activists to do when movements wane?
>
> This is a bizarrely self-limiting and defeatist view of the
> alternative to litigation.
>
> I advocate working with Democrats and even less rightwing
> Republicans because that's who exist in legislatures. But that
> doesn't mean you become captive of those elected-- you seek to make
> them captive to your movement and afraid of defying you because
> they fear not being reelected. You use all the regular tools of
> mass action plus primary campaigns and any other electoral tool to
> defeat politicians who vote wrong on the issues-- and therefore
> make sure the better politicians vote with you on the tough issues.
>
> As for lack of a "movement", what does that mean? There are tens
> of millions of people involvedtoday in a whole range of civic
> organizations, in many ways more than in many periods that people
> cite as heydays of "mass movements." There is a lack of
> cohesiveness in strategy and self-identity, but that is a different
> issue from lamenting the lack of people out there available to
> support legislative mobilization, if done right.
Well, many movements exist, but they are neither massive nor militant. And the power elite know this. Neither Republicans nor Democrats seem in fear of not being reelected. With the exception of Social Security, the Right has pretty much gotten all it has wanted -- from wars, tax cuts, social program cuts, to immigration.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>