[lbo-talk] War Losses Mount for Small Towns

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/22/07, Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> > * I assure you our housing market had never gone crazy
> > even before the
> > recent downturn.  The office you are paying $5,000+ per month for in
> > Manhattan may be had perhaps for as little as $1,500.  Organize Ohio,
> > while saving money, and you'll never see a Republican majority again!
>
> The housing market in Kansas City took a nosedive in 2006. The graph
> printed in the paper showing new home sales looks like a mountain with a
> steep cliff on the 2006 side.
>
> You can get a small office for $500-$1000/month in the burbs of Kansas
> City. The bottom fell out of our office market too.

Another thing to consider is that Manhattan, where many movement
leaders and intellectuals seem determined to to have offices, is not a
hospitable place for growing a Left that can challenge the Democratic
Party.  An absence of news about New York activists occupying HRC's
offices, in contrast to occupations of Democratic congresspeople's
offices in Toledo, OH, Denver, CO, Sacramento, CA, etc., is an index
of the Democratic Party hegemony over NY leftists.  (Is that because
NY leftists need Democrats for rent control and stablization to be
able to live in Manhattan at all?)

On 2/22/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 22, 2007, at 2:12 PM, Chuck wrote:
>
> > Look, if ANSWER, UFPJ and the labor unions are such skilled
> > organizers,
> > than certainly they can organize a national anti-war mobilization in
> > Columbus, Ohio. Us Midwesterners always have to get on the bus for
> > D.C.
> > protests, so why can't East Coast people get on some buses to the
> > Midwest? If you really want to stop the war, aren't you going to
> > have to
> > step outside your comfort zone?
>
> Why all this travel? Save time & energy & organize coordinated local
> protests. Why can't we have a national day (or two) against the war,
> with demos in hundreds of cities?

That's been done and being done: for March 17-19, UFPJ is calling
national days of demonstrations (cf.
<http://www.unitedforpeace.org/>), as it did last year (cf.
<http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=96>) and the
year before that (cf.
<http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=16>).  Not
particularly memorable, were they?

And this year, I'm afraid UFPJ is calling a national day of action
over that weekend in part because ANSWER had called for a march in DC
on the same weekend (cf.
<http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage>) and
TONC had called for an encampment in DC beginning on March 12 (cf.
<http://www.troopsoutnow.org/>).  Curb your sectarianism!
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>