Maggie --
It would be delusional of me to claim to have the answers to your
questions below (though there may be some on this list who will offer you
the correct line to answer everything you were wondering about). Just a
few thoughts since I should get back to the rest of my life and stop
taking up bandwidth:
First, the Panthers were the easy one since their politics were changed
at gunpoint. :|
Second, I think it partly has to do with various types of complacency.
In the case of the reproductive rghts movement, I remember how the
movement groups sort of re-oriented toward issues of access in the early
90s after it became clear that the juridical right to abortion was more
or less safe. All of a sudden, all of these upper-middle-class college
activists lost interest. Not that they didn't think it was important,
they just lost the personal compulsion to stay involved. That and the
fact that, through no fault of their own but simply because of who they
were, they had little connection to the rural and poor urban communities
most affected by dwindling access. For better or worse, this is a group
of people who can mobilize large numbers of their friends, who have the
social connections to get media attention, and who have access to
experienced activists. Their social impact is therefore disproportionate.
Just a thought about Viet Nam: People often cite the draft and the fact
that all of a sudden there was a blatant social cost to US involvement in
the war. Maybe it takes that kind of thing in general, I don't know
(this is not thereby an argument for bloodshed and mayhem, which may or
may not generate a political response but definitely gets people killed).
Another thought is that, just as in the thirties, what looked like a
spontaneous ourburst may only have been possible becasue of people
sitting around getting their asses kicked for twenty years.
This is sort of incoherent but I feel like I should shut up now.
Cheers,
Tavis
On Sat, 7 Jun 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In a message dated 97-06-08 00:48:15 EDT, you write:
> >I guess I'd say the same thing I said to Doug: Neither local activism nor
> >national activism changes people's lives without the right politics.
> Tavis,
> I don't disagree with you. I certainly think that national
> organizations without effective local activism tend to spin wheels and have
> conversations within limited audiences. For instance, CLUW since its
> inception has continued to speak to the same small in-group of union women.
> That is not to say that CLUW wasn't a good idea--but its appeal has remained
> limited. This leads to my next point, I think there is a catalyst not
> identified in most left debates as to what takes activism, either local or
> large, up to a level of influential importance. So, while I think you have
> identified some of the parts ("good" politics, local as well as national
> activism, grass roots activities), I still think there is a dynamic missing
> as to what takes each of these parts and, during different historical
> periods, leads to influential actions which change governments or changes the
> actions of governments in power (ie, as Michael Perelman pointed out--during
> the Nixon era).
> This is not to say that I have a real great read of what the
> catalyst is. There tends to be a strong opinion that this catalyst is the
> activity of a small group of influential individuals who 'summarize' things
> and provide leadership. (This is what Doug seems to imply in his posts.) I
> am not sure that this is true. While clearly there is a relationship between
> leadership and the actions of large groups, historically, there are leaders
> who no one listens to for years. For instance, there were 'leaders' in the
> anti-Vietnam War movement for years, but it did not become a mass movement
> until twenty years after some activists were protesting the war. Was there
> suddenly an increase in collective consciousness? Did something in the
> political/economic climate change? Another example, the women's movement
> produced many leaders in the 60s and 70s. Many of these leaders are still
> there but the activist nature of that movement has dwindled to occasional
> actions. Why? Abortion is unavailable in 3/4 of the country, most women
> still work in dead end jobs, and discrimination isn't disappearing--it may
> even have increased. Another, why did the Black Panthers lose so much of
> their activist nature?
>
> maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
