[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin

Tue Aug 13 12:56:31 UTC 2013

I had to read Mr. Roediger's response about six times to figure what it was saying before I picked a couple clues on the third time through that led me to believe that I think agree with his premise. I may be just reading into it what I want it to say.  There's two things I came away with in his response: (1) If you divide the world up between the 1% and the 99%, you'll find that the 1% is capable of, willing to,  and continually engaged in influencing the message of those opposed to them.  Obama's election is the prime example of their craft and the best example of how good they are at deceiving people.  (2) There may be an identity class all by itself of highly intelligent academic people who are so unintelligible that they are completely ignored and rejected no matter how 'right' (whatever that means) they are.  They should be on the street corners with protest signs that say: 'If you read this sign six times you'll understand it.'  As the cars
 go by they are grumbling under their beards that nobody cares about them....(no matter how correct they may be).

________________________________
 From: "Roediger, David R" <droedige at illinois.edu>
To: "sftalk at yahoogroups.com" <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu> 
Cc: "<peace-discuss at anti-war.net>" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; ocCUpy <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin

40 years ago? So it was then the period right before 1973 that liberals gloriously supported class struggles? And then somebody (Who was that in this fantasy? Got to think in terms of timing that George McGovern looks to be a likely culprit) tricked them into instead pursuing the supposedly completely different, indeed opposing, ideas of being against white supremacy, male supremacy, and homophobia.

I'm old but I can't remember that inspiring stretch of pure-and-simple class agitation by liberals. What would be some of the most outstanding examples from those years, say from 1963-73? I keep coming up with struggles for jobs and freedom now, with the uncompromising stance taken by working-class queers at Stonewall, and with important opposition to a racist and imperialist war. But surely these were on your view just the thin, plotting  edge of the nefarious identity politics wedge, diverting us from real deal.

I'm also blanking on the important liberal working class leaders who were then resisting taking the identity politics bait and laying down a class line uninfected by "identity politics"--one that could have won against neoliberalism. Was that what Walter Reuther was doing in keeping the skilled trades in auto overwhelmingly white? Or maybe, as the increasingly misguided late-career Bayard Rustin whom you rightly join in denouncing had it, the class warriors were George Meany and Albert Shanker (those great practitioners of white identity politics), united in their opposition to considering race whether the issue was integrating the building trades, keeping Vietnam from being incinerated, or engaging other than hysterically with community control of schools in minority neighborhoods. 
Please fill in some details.

In championing Walter Benn Michaels' socialism of fools--the view that a narrow class politics can by itself transform a social order predicated on multiple intersecting axes of oppression and that hidden plotters keep that from happening--you are advocating not just a poorly defended position but one that operates increasingly as a soundbite article of faith not really subject to evidence. Or in the conspiratorially inclined rhetoric Benn Michaels favors, maybe the neoliberals invented Benn Michaels and Estabrook. They certainly did fund and forward the similar, and hegemonic, Clinton, Obama, and Democratic Leadership Council arguments along the same lines, holding that it is only permissible for "progressives" to talk about allegedly unifying and hopelessly tepid economic issues, and not about justice.
freedom now, dave roediger
________________________________________

________________________________________
From: sftalk at yahoogroups.com [sftalk at yahoogroups.com] on behalf of C. G. Estabrook [carl at newsfromneptune.com]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 9:09 PM
To: Brussel, Morton K
Cc: <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; sftalk at yahoogroups.com; ocCUpy
Subject: [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin

It's the bane of identity politics, which American liberalism substituted for class politics 40 years ago, in its timorous response to the assault of neoliberalism. ("OK, if we can't have socialism, and we have to have imperialism, let's just see what color the rich kids are...!")

--CGE

On Aug 12, 2013, at 8:52 PM, "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Not infrequently Democracy Now! runs off the rails. I can remember well how disgusted I was with Bayard Rustin and his support of the Vietnam war by the U.S. .
> It is a disgrace that those actions of his are unmentioned in the Democracy Now! piece.
>
> --mkb
>
> On Aug 12, 2013, at 10:32 AM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: <turbulo at aol.com>
>>> Subject: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin
>>> Date: August 12, 2013
>>>
>>> I sent the following e-mail to Democracy Now! in response to a tribute to Bayard Rustin they did this morning. The occasion was a posthumous award
>>> Rustin is about to receive at the White House.
>>>
>>>> While rightly lauding the courage and commitment of Bayard Rustin as a founder and organizer of the civil rights movement, this morning’s tribute left out a less stellar side of his political career. By the mid 1960s,Rustin had sold his soul to Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party, acting to keep the civil rights and anti-war movements within the political bounds prescribed by the administration, and to red bait and exclude all elements deemed too radical by the cold warriors. He used his considerable influence to undermine the first big march against the Vietnam War in 1965 because its organizers refused to bar the participation of communists and other left-wing radicals. He opposed MLK’s 1967 Riverside Church address condemning the war. In his view, silence in the face of the wholesale slaughter of a people fighting for its independence was not too high a price to pay for remaining within the good graces of the slaughter’s chief
 perpetrator, in hopes that Johnson might do more for civil rights. It was Rustin’s role as a policeman for the White House that sullied his name in the eyes of the radical activists of that era, of which I was one. His posthumous accolade from Barack Obama comes as no surprise. In his older years he was a shining example the kind of housebroken “radical”that the president would no doubt like to see followed today. Rustin’s early role as a fighter deserves to be remembered. So do his later accommodations to power.  --Jim Creegan
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>

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