Dan La Botz is correct in his criticism of the "revolutionary" groups to the "left" of DSA - groups like PSL and Answer - which he says correctly have for years supported the Iranian regime. For whatever reason, La Botz doesn't mention one of the most influential "peace and freedom" groups to the right of DSA - Code Pink - who have played a despicable role regarding Iran. They organized several Iran government coordinated tours of Iran which that government used to try to legitimize itself domestically. Nor has Code Pink ever spoken up to support the Woman Life Freedom movement. The same is true of the Green Party.
But La Botz leaves out an even more crucial fact: DSA itself is guilty of the same failing. "Silence means assent" and in all the years prior to this war, DSA has never spoken up on behalf of that same struggle against the Iran regime. The DSA international committee has been handed exclusive power to issue statements on international issues. That committee has taken a soft Putin apologist position time and again, for instance regarding Ukraine. On February 26, the International Committee issued a statement <https://www.dsausa.org/statements/dsa-stands-against-imperialist-war-and-with-the-iranian-people/> denouncing the US-Israeli imperialist attack on Iran. To my knowledge that is the first statement DSA has officially made concerning Iran. I have been unable to find anything from DSA during the Woman Life Freedom movement or more recently when the Iran regime was slaughtering people in the streets again. That approach seems to reflect a general attitude among many members. I have posted a series of articles and comments on the DSA internal discussion bulletin board. This was prior to the US-Israeli assault. The response has been a uniform lack of interest in supporting the Iran revolution. An open internal struggle against DSA's campist approach in general and towards Iran in particular is necessary. Unfortunately, La Botz leaves that part out. La Botz calls for DSA to reach out to and work with No Kings and similar groups. He is right, but again the matter should go further. All of these groups organize from the top down. There should be democratically-run organizing committees established for all the events. Within agreed-upon parameters, all different points of view should be allowed representation on the speakers platforms. That includes open socialist views, so long as they aren't of the campist variety. The problem is that at least in my area - East Bay DSA - DSA itself is not democratically run. General membership meetings are run like cheer leading sessions. The agenda is set up in such a way that there is almost no opening for democratic discussion and debate. There is another power that La Botz neglects to mention. That is the labor movement, which has been missing in action for many, many years in almost all protest movements. Starting with the protests against the police murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland and continuing to the George Floyd protests, the unions were missing in action. I was in Ferguson a couple of days after Michael Brown was killed. I talked with one member of the UAW there. He told me that his local union president told him "this is not our battle," and in fact despite the fact that it seemed Ferguson's entire black community had mobilized itself the unions were totally absent. Even in the much ballyhooed so-called general strike in Minneapolis, the participation of the unions was minimal at best. The same is in general true for the No Kings protests. Here and there we see a few union signs or a tiny union contingent. Symptomatic of the union leadership's approach is that their web sites completely ignore the whole threat to democratic rights posed by Trump. Again, the problem is that DSA is closely linked to the same union leadership. In fact, representatives of that leadership - paid union staffers - often play a key role in DSA. Those staffers will do everything they can to divert any tendency to launch a campaign to change that direction of the unions. That's what the staffers are hired and paid to do. So, from every angle, for DSA to play the role that Dan La Botz poses, an internal struggle within DSA is required, just as it is within the unions. Let's hope that *this time* Dan La Botz won't shrink from that struggle! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#41160): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/41160 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118369160/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
