[lbo-talk] AP: Top 10 Political/Econ quotes of 2008

Jenny Brown jbrown72073 at cs.com
Sun Dec 21 08:47:46 PST 2008


Patrick Bond wrote:
>Offlist, Jenny, I'll send you the 1990 Capital & Class article I did on
prospects for a left turn within US populist traditions. The last few 'grafs are below. The later 'lameness' I worry about within the potential populist forces in the US came partly from Jackson's demobilization of the Rainbow (I wrote the article before it had been decisively killed in 1989), but the deeper causes are probably to be found in the single-issue nature of US civil society advocacy: a systematic failure/refusal to connect the dots... Maybe I'm wrong, I haven't lived in the US properly for about 20 years. Your thoughts are welcome.

Thanks.

A couple of quick reactions. No, I wouldn't say you're wrong. One of Jackson's initiatives after the Rainbow was financial literacy classes, mostly through churches, kind of a self-defense class against the credit card industry. Which is sort of typical of where that stuff goes when everyone's relying on foundation grants: More sophisticated victim-blaming, when it's not more sophisticated charity.

I would say that the whole Alinskyite complex--far from a source of strength--is one of the sources of exactly the problem you identify. (They hope we'll mistake militance in behalf of small reforms for radicalism.) Alinskyism is all about promoting short-term pragmatism and underestimating (and when necessary suppressing) people's ability to more deeply understand their long-term interests and possibilities. Pragmatism, the ideology, takes concrete form by organizing around small wins rather than big ideas.


>The Rainbow Coalition's influential Left strategist Vicente Navarro

I wish he were more influential.

Jenny Brown



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