> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Doug Henwood<dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> If we can't mobilize a significant minority of the!
>> middle 75% of this society, then this movement will evaporate.
> This confuses me. Are you saying that those 75% have no connection to
> prisoners and those "with no social power"? I'd venture that really
> large swathes of black 75-percenters would contest that assertion. Or
> are you saying that the 75% would be repulsed by appeals to the
> incarcerated and powerless? Again, I bet you'd find a lot of
> disagreement with that, from everywhere. Ever more pointedly, if the
> 75% were repulsed by solidarity with prisoners, then fuck 'em. I don't
> want to be a part of their "movement."
It sounds like you're saying anybody who isn't already on board with "our" movement, whose consciousness isn't already where yours or mine is, can go fuck themselves. I'd venture to say that there are also lots of blacks in the middle 75% who like Obama's cousin-Pookie schtick and Cosby's Shaniqua rant - fuck them too? Solidarity is not charity. It means A sees B as fighting the same enemy, and vice versa. It has to be constructed, it doesn't come naturally. It's the end-stage of political action, it can't be the precondition for it. If you or your movement want more 75 percenters to feel solidarity with prisoners, you or your movement has to show some solidarity with some of the 75 percenters who don't yet feel solidarity with those prisoners. If you say fuck 'em, how exactly does that help prisoners expand the number of people in solidarity with them? Or is that not the goal?
SA