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
