[lbo-talk] 300, 000 demonstrators, stretching to 10 blocks, in NYC

[Jerry Monaco]

On 4/30/06, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> At this point, it seems to me much more important to construct a left
> narrative that gives solidarity to the immigrant marches, and helps to
> link up immigrant identity with concrete and radical overhauls of
> labor relations. Viva la raza only goes so far.


Is this a plea for exclusivity?  Old slogans: An injury to one is an injury
to all! I know that you agree with this.

Of course shouldn't we ignore the fact that one of the reasons for
immigration to the U.S. in the first place is that it is the imperial
metropolis and that millions of people are being harmed and thousands of
people slaughtered from peasants in Columbia to the slums of Haiti, from the
middle east to the far east?  I suppose that your choice is a matter of
relative importance.  But if the anti-war movement in particular and
anti-imperialist and solidarity movements in general, are not in favor full
citizenship rights for immigrants, and are not in favor of more power to
working class organizations then we who see the connections are not doing
our jobs.  Similarly, if the immigrants rights movement are not for workers
power in the U.S. and are not anti-war and anti-imperialist then the
connections are not being drawn. Personally, I am for full citizenship
rights to all people who work in the U.S.  But oppression of immigrants at
home and political and economic domination abroad are essentially the same
issue and have the same roots.

Unfortunately both the immigrant rights leadership and the anti-war movement
leadership spend most of their time catering to various reactionary forces
of the democratic party to draw the connections that must be drawn if
solidarity is going to cast a wide net.

Jerry Monaco gave me a moderate amount of shit for dismissing the great
> white masses. Fair enough. I think they are dead meat, and nothing
> will revive them.


I don't even know what such unhelpful, racial phrases mean! "dead meat",
great white masses?  Criticism of the political orientation of the anti-war
movement would soon reveal that the immigrants rights movement has the same
orientation.  (See below.)

But the economic and discriminatory crush of the USG and its corporate
> elite on Mexican Americans and their undocumented cousins is an all
> together different equation. We (mostly white lefties) keep whining
> about the lack of solidarity with the working class. Well, here is a
> working class movement, par excellance. Except, it is clothed in an
> immigrant identity movement.


Unfortunately so many working class movements in the U.S. have been clothed
in ethnic and racial identity politics.  This is something to some degree
must be fought against.

Now is certainly the time to `see' this national working class
> movement in Marxist terms of labor, capital, neoliberalism,
> globalization and to see it as a potentially radical force. Latin
> America is ripe with sources for a radicalization of the US bound
> Latino.


Agreed to some extent.

What you might not know is that at the NYC protest there were a number of
immigrant rights groups at Foley Square in the pavillion of tents and tables
set up at the end of the march.  I think in general the people at Saturdays
march support the immigrants rights movement. And of they should be working
toward making connections between the two groups.  But why simply slag on
the anit-war movement?  I simply don't understand this kind of exclusive
tearing down instead of trying to build up.

The fact is that both the immigrants rights leadership and the UFPJ have
general the same political orientation toward the left-liberal wing of the
Democratic party and an orientation to a general amorphous middle class
politics.  But so what?  As you would agree, they are in many ways the same
struggle.  If they can't get together it is because of their Democratic
party single issue orientation.  In other words both the immigrant rights
leadership and the anti-war movement don't get together because there is not
a larger political context or political institutions to unite them.  They
both simply fall into the default political position of supporting their
preferred section of the Democratic party and thus they limit their larger
criticism.

Jerry


--
Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is
Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture
http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/

His fiction, poetry, weblog is
Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/

Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing
http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/
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