====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Video interview at: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/09/14 This is a fantastic video interview with Naomi Klein, who makes some really sharp insights about the problems facing the U.S. today, which fundamentally have to do with the lack of a real left. While calling for movements to remain entirely independent of the Democrats, she unfortunately stops short of calling for a third party. Even worse, she's Canadian, or else she'd be a great candidate for president. Quotes from the interview: "The problem is there's rage across the board. The right has organized itself very effectively and with frighteningly deep pockets to provide a voice for right-wing, often racist rage. A lot of people at the center/liberal end of the spectrum spend a lot of time managing rage, particularly around election time, and there really aren't very many outlets to voice progressive rage - rage at the elites, rage at those millionaires and billionaires. And it's a crisis - a crisis in this country that comes from the fact that there isn't a real left. there are a lot of institutions that pretend to be an independent left and then turn into an arm of the Democratic Party around election time - and election time in this country seems to never end." On what she would say at the October 2nd One Nation Working Together Rally in D.C.: "We have to build that independent left - and it has to be so strong, and so powerful, and so radical that it becomes irresistible. Because when people speak truth like that, and then when they hear their rage reflected in a constructive way, so that it isn't channeled toward the most vulnerable people, but actually going up the ladder, as opposed to down the ladder, then that builds a movement, and it builds a movement that politicians can't ignore, they can't ignore that constituency. Because this model clearly isn't working." (By that model she means the model of tying social movements to the Democrats.) ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
