*The Recent Links Mania At The "American Left History" Blog- A Note

Click on the title to link to the "American Left History" blog homepage for a view of the links mentioned in this entry.

What’s up with this large increase in the number of links that appear on the homepage of “American Left History”? Good question. I was somewhat unaware of the size of the increase until it was pointed out to me by a fellow member of a local militant anti-war circle that I belong to these days. What the increase reflects, mainly, is an increase in the getting out and about by our circle in the interest of propagandizing for independent labor candidates to run for election this year, the increased need we feel to aggressively oppose the Obamian war policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and, more ominously, Pakistan, and the struggle to create those anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committee that I have been hammering away in favor of in this space recently.

The increase also reflects, in some sense, our circle's response to the fact of a “wake up” call, finally, on the part of the American left that for all of 2008 and most of 2009 got caught up in the Obama drift, or worst, gave him a pass despite his obvious and upfront imperial political agenda. The mea culpas are strewn all over the landscape these days as groups and organizations back peddle away from the "Messiah" and thus we have an opening to get a hearing for our more radical political perspectives.

A graphic case in point on this shift in the winds and, therefore, our need to pay attention to the vast cohort of groups, tendencies, organizations, pre-party formations, leagues and so on that define the American left today (and whose very scattered-ness reflects one of the fundamental problems that we face organizationally and politically) was our attendance at a recent New England-wide anti-war conference in Cambridge. Normally our circle would not attend such an event because the conference was set up as a series of panels and educational workshops and there is not much we do not already know about imperialism and the ways to fight it that could be learned there.

Going into detail about the politics and organization of the event is beyond what I want to comment on. However, what such a gathering of left activists is good for is to present ideas, our ideas, and to make contacts with interested militants that we would not run into otherwise, especially those who live close to New England military installations. That said, expect to see more links as we try to sort out who is ‘real’ and who is just “trimming their sails” in reverse just in case Obama gets back on what they perceive is his ‘real’ track. That is their real tack.