Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 02:04 PM 9/1/2010, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> >If you look at the history of the US in this century and the radical
> >leaders capable of tapping such a vein, what do you see? Debs,
> >imprisoned. Huey Long and Martin Luther King, assassinated. Ralph
> >Nader, slandered and denied any meaningful access to the public
> >forum. Somebody must have been worried.
>
> So James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King for political reasons?
Shane's conspiricism (as usual) blurs his argument -- but leaving that aside, I think he is substantially correct here. No conspiracy theory is needed, just the public record, to reveal the heavy repression that came down on Blacks, Indians, & Latinos in the late '60s. And it's worth pausing a bit on the Chicago 8 trial. The Judge assigned was one whose decisions were reversed time after time. But a trial such as that (regardless of its ultimate outcome) is a heavy burden on any movement. The Courts are worse than the legislatures & Congress as a place of political struggle, though one does what one can with the cards one is dealt.
All this is not to say that that potential radical mass (remembver mass means 5 to 15% of hte populace) is at all easy to move or that it can be moved merely by good leadership. All sorts of contingencies have to work right for a movement to get under way. We (humanity) really might lose. I don't see how anyone can not see this. History is not structured for us. But building mass non-electoral movements, when events make it piossible, and constant efforts in that direction even when conditions are unfavorable, is the only route out of barbarism. We just have to hope that at some crucial point the troops won't obey orders.
Carrol