Bravo, Elaine. My thoughts exactly.
Ian Robinson
On Wed, 18 Jan 1995, Elaine Bernard wrote:
> Come'on Doug, play nice. In the same spirit that I took up
> J. Case, I'm sure you don't mean CP as a term of endearment.
> Play nice boys! There's some real politics here, so cut out
> the red baiting bullshit. I think the real CP, Trotskyist,
> New Left, American Left legacy is ignoring political differences
> and real discussion and decending everything to the level of
> name calling. If you don't agree with me, you're a (fill in
> the gap) and therefore your criticism is unworthy of further
> concern or debate.
>
> On the issue of NYC I tend to think that it is rather unusual.
> The largest city in the country, with strange, strange, politics.
> I wish Mike Davis who move there and do for NY what he did
> for LA in CITY OF QUARTZ. However, that aside, I do think
> that in building a grassroots, democratic, membership based
> political party that Madison, Milwaukee, Little Rock, etc
> will be more typical than NYC.
>
> As for the fusion tactic, the difficulty here is keeping as
> a tactic, and only a tactic, to gain state wide (or city wide
> or whatever level the group is interested in apply it) ballot
> status. The barriers that the state has set up in this country
> to prevent democratic self-organization in elections is worthy
> of a totalitarian state. It's a real barrier and problem for
> any third party.
>
> My view is there will be opportunists in the New Party, and
> sectarians, and we'll go too slow sometimes and too quickly
> other times. But in a grassroots democratic party if we
> build a culture of real debate, over policy and tactics
> I believe we will be able to resolve differences -- and
> in fact, on occasion operate quite differently in different
> states and communities depending on the strength of the
> organization and it's level of organization (that is, has
> it elected people, does it have access to ballot status,
> has it been able to reform election laws...)
>
> Because I believe this discussions are absolutely essential
> to the growth and development of any third party, I think
> it's important for leftist, who agree or are critical of
> specific tactics, actions or policies to aid in creating
> a political culture where these issues can be debated and
> discussed on their merits -- not on who is an trot or who
> is a stalinist.
>
> Elaine Bernard
>