Tarpinian from LRA here>
Teamsters Enter New Era With 26th Convention (Jul. 9, 2001)
By Greg Tarpinian
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001III/msg00442.html
M.Pugliese
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 2:18 PM
Subject: Re: [ASDnet] Fw:Openness and Honesty in Left Politics
Michael:
Please indicate the following to the lists where you have forwarded my
posting, so as to avoid confusion.
This thread began with an e-mail of mine, available in the LBO-Talk and
PEN-L archives, in which I addressed a "report" on the recent Teamsters
Convention by Greg Tarpinian of Labor Research Association [LRA] that has
been circulated on left listservs on the Internet. Tarpinian's report was
full of the highest praise for Hoffa Jr., announcing that the Teamsters were
now the most democratic and progressive of American international unions. My
point was that whatever flaws the TDU might have, it is clearly the best
hope for cleaning up and democratizing the Teamsters in the near future. I
further pointed that the LRA has been a primary front vehicle for the
Communist Party in the labor movement, and that its fondness for Hoffa Jr.,
a fondness that goes back to before Hoffa's election, was based on its
hostility to a rank-and-file movement which had a rather strong Trotskyist
presence among its founders and leaders, a presence that went back to the
old International Socialists an!
d continues today with Solidarit
y. In my original post, I called this hostility to the TDU and support for
Hoffa Jr. "rank opportunism."
A response was sent to my post on PEN-L by an individual member of
Solidarity which maintained that it was "red baiting" to suggest that the
TDU or _Labor Notes_ had any connection to Solidarity, or that Solidarity
[!] had any special Trotskyist history or connections. It was in response to
that post that I penned the one you forwarded, which spoke of common
knowledge on the left regarding these ties.
Leo Casey
