There's an article on today's Counterpunch by Bill Simpich titled "Lessons
from the 1970 Student Strike: Building a Movement that will be Stronger
After the US is Out of Iraq".
(<http://www.counterpunch.org/simpich05182006.html>http://www.counterpunch.org/simpich05182006.html)
It rehashes the old "single issue versus multi-issue" debate of the 1960s
and 70s that many of us, including me as an SWP veteran, lived through.
That debate still goes on in one fashion or another as last year's
controversy over ANSWER's insisting that the Palestinian right of return
become a litmus test for the movement. I have no idea who Simpich is, but
he seems fairly knowledgeable about the debate that took place in the 1960s
even though he is mostly wrong if not mischievous.
Simpich views the May 9, 1970 Washington demonstration called by "the
radicals and pacifists of what would become the People's Coalition for
Peace and Justice (PCPJ), who believed in multi-issue organizing and the
need to leaven mass mobilizations with civil disobedience" as a kind of
acid test for the antiwar movement.
The PCPJ was a rival to the coalition led by the SWP. Simpich neglects to
mention that the CP was instrumental to the formation of the PCPJ since it
saw "multi-issue" campaigns as complementary to its own orientation to DP
liberals, while the SWP fought to keep the antiwar movement independent of
peace candidates. The CP had natural allies in some of the campus radicals
who had hadn't made a clean break with bourgeois politics. As an "outside
agitator", I took part in a debate at Harvard involving Jamie Galbraith who
wanted the Student Mobilization Committee to endorse some liberal running
against the war.
Simpich does indirectly refer to the tensions between the SWP and the CP,
but in his eyes it appears to have more to do with government "dirty
tricks" rather than politics:
>>A key "dirty tricks" tactic of the FBI involved "exploiting the
hostility" between other sectors of the left and the SWP. Like the CPUSA,
the Trotskyist SWP (aka "Trots") was plagued with infiltrators during this
period - a working estimate is that every third member was actually a
government informant. James Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying on America: The FBI's
Domestic Counteintelligence Program. (New York; Praeger, 1992), P. 137.<<
As far as Davis is concerned, this one-third figure is utterly laughable.
About 2 years ago I challenged Chip Berlet, who made a similarly wild claim
on Doug Henwood's list to back it up. He could not. Most SWP'ers came out
of the student movement at this time. The idea that an 18 year old antiwar
activist from our bases at the University of Illinois or Wisconsin would go
on the FBI payroll to snoop on the SWP is just ridiculous.
Simpich takes Dave Dellinger's side in a fight that took place that day
whether civil disobedience would be permitted. It is literally impossible
to make sense out of his version of the events that day since they involve
only the word of people who were bitterly opposed to the SWP and to
single-issue mass actions. He quotes Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan,
the authors of "Who Spoke Out", as follows: "So the marshals (who had been
trained by Bradford Lyttle and the Socialist Workers Party's Fred Halstead)
labeled CD as violent."
This is a really crude distortion of the SWP's views. The SWP did not
regard CD's as violent per se but it fought all efforts to foist such
actions on a peaceful mass action like cherries on a sundae. My experience
with people like Dave Dellinger is that they had a tough time generating
momentum for an independent civil disobedience but were always looking for
ways to include as part of a more mainstream and massive protest, just the
way that anarchists do today. The simple fact that these folks refuse to
understand is that the average worker or student prefers not to get smacked
in the head with a billy club.
From his rather obscure references to the May 9th protests of 36 years
ago, Simpich veers off into a condemnation of efforts by the Movement for a
New Congress, the Moveon.org of its day, to push for electing peace
candidates. What this has to do with opposition to Dellinger's views on May
9th, I am not sure since Dellinger never met a peace candidate he didn't
like. Simpich does complain that "The Princeton Plan failed in changing the
complexion of Congress, while the few authentic antiwar firebrands such as
Democrat Al Lowenstein and Republican Charles Goodell were targeted by the
Nixon Administration for defeat." I had to rub my eyes at this. Whatever Al
Lowenstein was, "firebrand" hardly describes it.
>>During his days in Congress, Rumsfeld struck up a close friendship with
Allard Lowensteinanother example of Rumsfeld's eagerness to embrace, up to
a point, someone bright from an opposing camp. Rumsfeld and Lowenstein met
in the mid-1960s when Rumsfeld was a congressman and Lowenstein was a
left-leaning activist and a backer of Robert Kennedy. "He almost lived with
us," recalls Joyce. They debated politics until late into the night, with
Lowenstein sometimes sleeping on their sofa. They grew so close Lowenstein
was with the Rumsfelds when their son, Nick, was born in 1967. The
following year, Rumsfeld stood beside Lowenstein when he won his House seat
from Long Island. Both wrestlers, they frequented the House gym. When
Lowenstein ran for re-election in 1970, Rumsfeldnow at the OEOpublicly
refuted charges by Lowenstein's Republican opponent that Lowenstein was a
dangerous radical. But then Rumsfeld endorsed that very opponent. He knew
that his boss, President Nixon, expected him to. "That's when you cease to
be an independent operator," Rumsfeld explained. Lowenstein lost andunlike
others who felt betrayed by Rumsfeldnever forgave him. (Lowenstein was
murdered in 1980 by a disturbed former disciple.)<<
<http://www.geocities.com/rummyfan/chicagomag.html>http://www.geocities.com/rummyfan/chicagomag.html
--
www.marxmail.org
