>Mosley - Regarding the post below that sparked your response, I wonder if
>"bon moun" is a "spin-meister" for the Democrats. The analysis is clever but
>the conclusions are suspect. It appears to be an adaptation of the scare
>tactics employed by the Gore campaign. Instead of encouraging the exodus
>from the Democratic Party that has treated African Americans so poorly,
>bring out the "bogey-man" the "proto-fascist faction of the Republican
> Well Democrats, I have in mind the creation of a bigger
>"bogey-man" ---- a progressive coalition led by the Green Party and the
> Peace.
I've been accused of a lot of things, but never that I would spin for the
Democratic Party. I hope this isn't implying a motive to do so. Just
calling them like I see them. In conversations with a friend who organizes
in poor African-American communities in Birmingham a couple of years ago,
this was the dilemma being faced even then by Black progressives. Time,
energy, and resources taken for Black activists to work with often arrogant
and semi-clueless white "progressives" was time, energy, and resources
taken away from attention to those poor, Black communities. The driving
force behind all this "coalition building" was foundation money (the trap
built by the IRS for non-profits) that wanted to see "we-are-the-world,
we-are-the-children", happy-face diversity to salve their white liberal
guilt. Meanwhile, that neglect in poor communities left a void, which the
NOI was only too willing to fill.
I am not against Black nationalism. I think it has some salient points
that white progressives ignore at their peril. The concern of Black
leftists I know is that NOI and others marry that nationalism with
opportunistic notions of "black capitalism".
I would love to see African-Americans take the Dems to account. But that's
not my decision to make. The Greens won't make it either.
The notion that the Green Party will "lead" a progressive coalition strikes
me as a perfect example of the above-mentioned arrogance. When communities
of oppressed nationalities (yes, I called 'em that) are overwhelmingly
bearing the burden of this system's crises in this country, I have a hard
time figuring out why the Green Party--a predominantly white, middle-class,
university-based formation--would assume THEY can provide leadership in the
challenge to this system. Seems to me they should shut up and listen to
what's going on in these oppressed communities, then line up behind the
programs of the Black left... whose support has been thrown into formations
like the Labor Party and the Black Radical Congress.
That these processes may provide space for Republicans to advance their
fascist-like agendas is not a scare tactic. It's a real, hopefully
calcualted, risk. Let's watch the next six months--that doesn't seem too
long--and see what happens. I'll make you some substantial bets.
There are no silver bullets, no easy answers. I don't trust any one or any
group that implies there are. They are charlatans or fools.
>
>
>
>bon moun wrote:
>
>> Black voters' loyalty to the democrats has not been out of fierce loyalty
>> I think there's a good chance that the
>dems
>> insistence on "reconciliation", a clear bit of bourgeois damage control
>(as
>> opposed to partisan damage control), and the Reno Justice Dept's
>> chicken-shit response to voting rights violations, will give lots of black
>> voters pause, and for many will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
>> Unfortunately, the left is still a small and
>> heterogeneous mob in the US, and the black left has been reluctantly
>> spending a lot of its political capital trying to work with white
>> This is where the
>> real anger is growing, and in the absence of a clearly articualted black
>> progressive alternative, many have been and will continue to turn to
>> nationalism--not a bad thing in itself, but very reactionary in the form
>of
>> And
>> If the
>> Republicans can hold their coaltion together, this will strengthen them
>> immeasurably, which also strengthens their proto-fascist faction as an
>> All in all, a very depressing scenario.
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx
"Mask no difficulties."
-Amilcar Cabral
"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?
-Audre Lorde
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