[lbo-talk] "Citizen," Concept of was Death penalty

[Carrol Cox]

My subject was movement-building. The distinction between resident and
citizen (leaving aside Andie N's important specifications) merely underlines
that one does not have to be eligible to vote in order to participate in a
street demonstration. Leftists, at this time, should only be marginally
concerned even with third-party campaigns and not at all with the DP/RP
squabbles. And for that reason we don't have to exercise the discriminations
that (for example) someone registering voters must exercise.

So-called "illegal migrants" are in some ways central to our movement (or
potential movement).

 Carrol

P.S. And of course we should attack the exclusion of convicted felons from
voting. While I don't give a damn who is elected president, I care a lot
about all those denied the right to vote.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On
> Behalf Of Joseph Catron
> Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 7:01 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] "Citizen," Concept of was Death penalty
> 
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 7:25 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Shane makes a good point. It has become clear that in building a mass
> > movement in the U.S. it is essential to make _resident_, not "citizen,"
the
> > name of the left constituency.
> 
> 
> I think even that's a step too narrow. Without taking the time to crunch
> the numbers, I'm pretty sure that a clear majority of US executions are
now
> carried out extrajudicially against residents of other countries. What
> differentiates (potential) left politics in the US from, say, Pakistan, is
> that a Pakistani has a clear, legitimate interest in American policy that
> Carroll or I simply do not have in Pakistan's. Ours is a damn empire,
after
> all.
> 
> As horrific as Obama's drone assassination of a 16-year-old US citizen (
> http://wapo.st/R5p7eo) was, I do not think we should accept any politics
> depicting as more horrific than his similar murders of thousands of non-US
> citizens.
> 
> --
> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
> lytlað."
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