1968!
Of course, I'm very obnoxious when it comes to having a more optimistics take on these things than Carrol usually does. ;-)
> Perhaps, then, the proper _central_ concern of leftists in the u.s. (a
> concern which of course incorporates many other) is what can be done in
> the U.S. to reach and mobilize the 3% (or fewer) which is the outside
> figure of mass mobilizastion in core capitalist nations except under the
> most extraordinary circumstances.
3% Why set your goals so low?
By this logic, years ago I should have set as the goal for my website, Infoshop.org, of reaching a few thousand anarchists. Perhaps I'm foolish, but I've always set my sights higher. I think this has worked. Right now the site has over 140,000 unique visitors each month and we're setting up two new servers to handle the traffic.
> Was it Gramsci who spoke of manuring the ground? I am moving towards
> seeing the CPUSA during the '40s and '50s as the chief model for our
> current tasks: keeping something alive that will be there when the next
> period of rising expectations arrives and makes mass struggle possible.
> The CP simply didn't have the courtesy to disappear when its task was
> completed and the '60s emerged. :-(
CPUSA? FAIL!
Come on, the old hierarchical movements are a thing of the past? Even the recent revival of this model in the U.S. anti-war movement ended in failure.
I think the time is ripe for mass struggle. It's always ripe for mass struggle. But nothing will happen if most leftists go around debating when the right historical moement will arrive. The fact is that there are LOTS of radicals out there in the USA these days. The problem isn't that we don't have the numbers, rather we just aren't doing the things to light those fuses. Many of our comrades are consumed with nonsense like Ron Paul and 9/11 "truth." Others think that George Bush has turned America into a concentration camp for leftists, when there is plenty of room for dissent out there. But leaving aside those annoyances, a big problem is just lack of organization, cooperation and vision.
The other big problem is that our people are too cautious and timid. I'm not saying this to sound macho--I'm cautious enough as it is right now. But we have seen a retreat even from fairly mild forms of illegal dissent. When direct action and similar tactics stop happening, movements freeze up and die. If you look at most of the effective social change movements in recent decades, there is always an element of direct action and in-your-face dissent.
I just talked to one of my friends who was in the center of the housing protests in New Orleans this week. She was arrested on Wednesday. Tortured in jail for two hours, kept overnight and released on Thursday. She helped people open up a gate to the city council meeting. The cops tasered her in the back 3 times and knocked out a tooth. They took her away to the hospital and then the cops tried to arrest her again at the hospital, but the staff chased the cops away. My friend has had several back surgeries this year, to alleviate problems stemming from spinal cord surgeries when she was younger.
She's in good spirits tonight and was talking up a storm about the housing crisis in New Orleans.
If my friend can do these kinds of things and come out of it fighting, then shouldn't our movements put a little bit more on the line? Want to stop the war? Step off the sidewalk!
> A little spark can start a prairie fire -- IF THE PRAIRIE IS DRY ENOUGH.
The prairie out here has several inches of new snow tonight. We'll have to postpone the revolution until after New Year's.
Chuck