[lbo-talk] +AFs-lbo-talk+AF0- WEATHERMAN: Racists +ACY- Spoilers of Unity

Jesse Lemisch jesse.lemisch at verizon.net
Thu Feb 11 15:38:19 PST 2010


Agreed about Weather. See also Lemisch, +ACI-Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack+ACEAIg- New Politics, Summer 2006: http://newpol.org/node/204

----- Original Message ----- From: +ACI-Carrol Cox+ACI- +ADw-cbcox+AEA-ilstu.edu+AD4- To: +ADw-lbo-talk+AEA-lbo-talk.org+AD4- Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:07 PM Subject: +AFs-lbo-talk+AF0- WEATHERMAN: Racists +ACY- Spoilers of Unity

+AD4-I don't know whether SA was deliberately lying or whether he was that +AD4- ignorant of my politics. But if he is that ignorant, othersmay be as +AD4- well. +AD4- +AD4- Let's have some context. +AD4- +AD4- The Panthers were a breakthrogh in theory and practice for the U.S. +AD4- Left: they solved the problem that wracked many for over a century: How +AD4- one could achieve white-black unity in the struggle. The answr was a +AD4- revolutionary BlackParty, strongly entrtrenched in the Black community +AD4- AND committed to full cooperation with the left as a whole. They joined +AD4- in anti-war demos that were overwhelmingly white: two weeks before his +AD4- murder Fred Hampton went to Madison to co-lead an anti-war march with +AD4- the leader there. They never denied any request for cooperation from +AD4- left groups that honored their independence. Fred Hampton in +AD4- mid-November of '69 came down to little pipsqueak ISU (it's much larger +AD4- now, as is Bloomington/Normal, but we weren't all that better than a +AD4- village then) to speak for an SDS function. Panthers not only followed +AD4- this practice, they were 'teaching' the Young Lords to follow it. They +AD4- wren't even driven off from this policy by the boos given David Hiloiard +AD4- at the San Francvisco Moratorium in November '69 when he declared the +AD4- rigtht of Blacks to self-defense. They worked with white groups to try +AD4- to build the Peace +ACY- Freedom Party in 1968. +AD4- +AD4- Fred Hampton spent the last months of his life going from black +AD4- highschool to black highschool in Chciago to speak -- and the core of +AD4- his speech was a criticism of the Weatherman -- because it was splitting +AD4- that potential unity of Blacks and White with its individualist, stupid +AD4- childish violence for the sake of violence, its utter contempt for +AD4- serious organizing of anykind. See Mark Rudd's self criticism published +AD4- in several places. I'm rather ticked off that Monthly Review has seen +AD4- fit to publish stuff by Berndine Dohrn.. She has neer let out a pep of +AD4- self-criticism for her central role in the destruction of SDS. +AD4- +AD4- Jan and I drove up to Chicago in October of '69 t join the RYM II demos +AD4- there. We drove over with a woman from Chicago and a couple other people +AD4- from Bloomington to leaflet at a white high school in a working class +AD4- district. I parked the car on a one way street leading back towards the +AD4- high school. We stood in front of a candy store to pass out our +AD4- leaflets. (Background we didn't know about: The preceding we ek +AD4- Weathermen had been there with their stupid filthy tactic of +ACI-Are you +AD4- for imperialism or against it? 60 seconds to decide.+ACI- Thenb they beat up +AD4- a couple of students.) The woman with us mentioned SDS and it seemed as +AD4- though a thousand persons materialized out of the air -- and they were +AD4- angry. I've never been so fucking scared in my life. I ran back down the +AD4- street, got the car, and drove slwoly back into the mob picking up our +AD4- people as I went along. Yikes+ACE- +AD4- +AD4- And that is the sort of thing those Fucking Spoilers the Weather People +AD4- did. There is not one single good thing to say for them. And current +AD4- romanticvizing of them is anti-left, inexcusable. I've like manythings +AD4- Ron Jacobs has written, but he was totally wrong to excuse the +AD4- Weathermen. They grounded their 'theory' in the claim that the American +AD4- Working Class was irredeemably racist (as though there were no Black or +AD4- Latinmo workers+ACE-) but they were the racists for letting their little +AD4- revolutionary egos lead them to completely smash the racist unity that +AD4- the Panthers and others were trying to build. +AD4- +AD4- Carrol +AD4-

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