At 10:36 PM 4/3/00 -0400, Michael Yates wrote:
>I went to the meeting early so I could hear the other presentations. The
>first speaker was Mike Dolan of Seattle WTO protest fame.
Mike Dolan runs an outfit called Global Trade Watch that is a wing of Ralph
Nader's Public Citizen. Since Dolan's China-bashing seems suspiciously
linked to the sort of advocacy found in the ranks of some of our more
backward-looking unions (UNITE, United Steelworkers), I was curious to see
if could find evidence of funding from these quarters on Nader's website or
in Lexis-Nexis.
I discovered something very interesting.
Nonprofits are not required to divulge the identify of donors of more than
$200. So Public Citizen (and the Sierra Club) take advantage of this.
Although it seems highly dubious for groups charged with the responsibility
for opening up "civil society" to hide their financing in this manner, it
actually reflects their "inside the beltway" mentality and willingness to
cooperate with the powers-that-be. Nader reluctance to run a high-profile
campaign for President on the Green Party ticket last go-round, clearly
related to an unwillingness to raise and spend money on the order of his
Public Citizen, could very likely be related to his embarrassment over some
of their sources.
Meanwhile, I discovered that Morris Dees is the treasurer of Public
Citizen, which goes a long way in explaining the rather shady attitude
toward funding. Dees runs a nonprofit in the South that raises money on the
basis of northern liberal hysteria about the Klan, but does very little to
actually confront the Klan. Interestingly enough, Dees has gone on an
ideological offensive against the Green contingent of the Seattle
protestors whom he regards as romantic reactionaries in broad brushstrokes
that evokes LM magazine. Alex Cockburn and his co-editor Jeff St. Clair
have made an amalgam between Doug Henwood and Dees on the most flimsy
grounds. Supposedly the "snooty" LBO would also find grounds to disparage
the environmentalists. Obviously the evidence is just the opposite. Doug
and LBO has, to its credit, identified completely with the sea turtle
contingent.
People like Dolan and Ralph Nader expose a problem in this emerging
movement that was addressed at an interesting panel at this weekend's
Socialist Scholars Conference titled "After Seattle: a New
Internationalism?" Tania Noctiummes, who advises French trade unions on
questions such as MAI, made some very cogent points. She said that the
discourse around the Seattle protests, especially from figures like Dolan,
revolves around "citizens" and "civil society". Such classless categories
can obviously lead to all sorts of confusions with respect to our attitude
toward the ruling class. Are Bill Clinton and the sea turtle protestors
both "citizens" in pursuit of a common political goal? Given Clinton's
demagogic appeals and the past record of inside-the-beltway operations like
the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, one would have to say that an
alternative--namely socialist--is required.
She also pointed out that there has been very confused thinking about what
it means to be engaged in struggle around "international" issues. After
all, the main terrain is the national state even when it comes to global
trade agreements such as the WTO itself. The trade unions and NGO's
involved in the Seattle protests tend to sow confusion on these questions
because politically they are reluctant to confront their own ruling class.
It is much easier to confront the Chinese government on prison labor than
our own apparently. Wouldn't it make for an interesting leap forward in the
class struggle if the AFL-CIO announced that it would organize prison
laborers in the USA? They haven't lifted a finger for welfare recipients,
so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Doug Henwood spoke on the same panel as Tania Noctiummes and made many
excellent points, including the need to steer clear of China-bashing.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
