[Peace-discuss] reply to Ricky

[Thomas Mackaman]

Ricky makes somes interesting points (see below) about 
movements being the imperative, and not elections.  True 
enough, but elections are about much more than counting 
votes.  And while I have not read the books that he 
mentions, I'm sure that in drawing up an honest balance 
sheet for all sorts of grass-roots movements, we could see 
that they have often gained a number of short-term 
successes.  

But if we consider the long-term--and this holds true of 
many movements between the 30s adn 60s-- then we must 
conclude that they have also failed in large part due to 
their inability, or unwillingness, to break from the 
Democratic Party.  A great example of this is the CIO, which 
grew out of the mass industrial protests of the 30s.  One 
can argue whether or not the CIO's devotion to FDR was 
effective (I'd argue against)-- but by the mid 40s its 
subserviance to the Democrats spelled doom for organized 
labor's future.  The worst consequences of this came in the 
50s and 60s, when--so as not to offend the southern wing of 
the Democratic Party--  the labor movement by and large 
abstained from the Civil Rights movement in the South.  The 
CIO is not alone; similar examples can be seen with the 
Civil Rights and environmental movements.  The peace 
movement now faces a similar dilemma. 

Kerry has unambiguously, publically, and repeatedly told us 
that he will carry forward Bush's war policies ("failure is 
not an option").  Therefore, any *peace* movement that 
exists will hereafter, by definition, be in opposition to 
the Democratic Party.  The question is whether or not people 
will draw these conclusions, and move to advance a political 
alternative to imperialist war.  Under these conditions, 
washing one's hands of the elections and declaring "the 
movement is everything" has already become a deadend.

Tom
*********************
Message: 2 
Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 15:09:05 -0700 (PDT) 
From: Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> 
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Movements and elections 
To: peace discuss <peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com> 
Message-ID: 
<20040503220905.63250.qmail at web13126.mail.yahoo.com> 
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I think reasonable people can disagree on this, but I 
also think we are losing sight of the most important 
objective. 

I may sound like a broken record, but I have to say 
that I haven't seen any evidence yet that focussing on 
elections will change much (unless you can afford to 
buy one).  But I have seen evidence that grassroots 
movements can. 

Piven and Cloward make a solid case for this in Poor 
People's Movements.  The Depression-era movement of 
the unemployed, for example, made significant gains - 
including relief, policy change and legislation - 
before devoting any of its energy to elections or 
lobbying.  And after turning to the sacrosanct 
American democratic way, they began to lose ground 
quickly.  The labor movement, the civil rights 
movement and the welfare rights movement of the 1960s 
all show the same trend. 

(P&C don't argue that voting is irrelevent.  In fact, 
grassroots movements find it easier to survive and 
succeed when ordinary people do turn out to vote.  And 
the hint of change tends to show up first at the 
polls.  But the elections themselves seem to have 
little effect.) 

Jeffrey St Clair made a similar argument about the 
environmental movement in the 1990s when he was here 
in town recently, promoting his new book Been Brown So 
Long It Looked Like Green To Me.  The book is pretty 
persuasive, too. 

So, the best thing we can probably do is concentrate 
on building the anti-war movement, or whatever 
movement we prefer.  That's not to say we shouldn't 
vote.  Of course we should, but let's keep our 
objectives in mind. 

And if we want to stop war, voting for Kerrey will 
have no effect.  By all means, folks should do so if 
they have some other reason (although he isn't much 
better on many issues), but to my mind when we go into 
the booth, we ought to be doing it as part of a 
movement and not just as a thoroughly disgusted 
individual. 

I think this is entirely separate from this debate 
about spoilers, voting conscience, lesser and greater 
evils, etc.  I think we need to remember that we do 
not directly elect the president in this country. 
Illinois is going for Kerrey, if he even comes close. 
So voting for Nader, or the Greens, will not elect 
Bush.   

What it might do is register opposition to the 
Tweedledee-Tweedledum factor, and from the left.  I 
wouldn't doubt for an instant that the message would 
be lost of the professional voting results analysts 
that will be going over the results with a 
fine-toothed comb.  Even that is, I think, almost 
certain to prove less effective than a strategy of 
raising hell, counting heads and raising hell again. 
That's the way most of the real progress of the last 
century has happened, and that's the way we can make 
progress now.