Once Again, On The U.S. Social Forum- A “Teachable” Moment

Click on headline to link to the United For Peace And Justice (UJP) website, for an example of the kinds of activities that this umbrella organization (a part of the bigger umbrella organization, U.S. Social Forum) promotes.

Markin comment:

Yesterday in a post headlined I Will Love This Country Until The Day I Die-I Will Fight This Government Until We Achieve Our Communist Future- A Short Note, dated July 11, 2010, I noted that sometimes it is fun for me to be a communist propagandist trying to mesh the news of the day, the political atmospherics, and the struggle for our communist future together. And, at times, learning a little something in the process. In that commentary I also noted that sometimes it is not. The subject of that post was a commentary on those who challenge my “American-ness”. However today I am back on ground that I much prefer to fight on even though I am being taken to task- again.

This time though the criticism stems from a reader who took umbrage (her word, but I like it) over my characterization of the recently completed U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit in late June as a talkfest at a time when we need to get back, desperately get back, into the streets. (See The Streets Are Not For Dreaming - We Need An All Out Anti-War Push To Get Out Of Afghanistan- And We Need To Start Now, posted July 3, 2010, on the American Left History blog.)

The central thrust of her criticism concerned my note to that entry where I expanded, somewhat, on my take on a previous Social Forum in 2004 held at the same time and in the same city as the Democratic National Convention in Boston where I noted that those attendees were safely ensconced far away from any street action on the day before the opening of that convention. I also noted that, based on both anecdotal and written information by those involved, that the leadership of that Social Forum (and/or organizations that make up that umbrella organization) ordered or discouraged their memberships from attendance at the pre-convention anti-war event. This whole thing, in the end, amounted to some nasty “behind the scenes” organizational wrangling, as usual.

What makes all of this the “teachable” moment promised in the headline is the reader’s argument that Social Forum workshops are important to “gather in the clan” (my expression) and “take stock of where we are, and where we are going” (her expression) in order to move forward. Obviously, workshops, fora and the like ARE worthwhile. What the reader missed, and what I fear that she will always miss is that such activities (such “talk shops”) are a substitute for real actions beyond the walls of the classroom.

In the specific cases that I was addressing (2004, and the G-20 in 2010, but I could go back a longer way that than, a lot farther back to the 1960s with the Socialist Workers Party-led National Peace Action Coalition and the Communist Party-led People’s Coalition For Peace and Justice ) there had been a conscious political decision on the part of the participating organizations to work one way, to try to gain organizational control of the “movement” (such as it is) and, no question, not create a big stir in this pre-election period (a subject of open and constant dispute by the more militant elements) in order not to hurt the chances of the national Democratic Party. This at a time, and that was part of my argument as well, when the situation has cried out, and cried out to high heaven, for opposition in the streets to Democratic Party President Obama’s bloody, vicious war in Afghanistan (and residue war in Iraq).

Rather than go over the same material from that previous blog entry note I have expanded somewhat on that note to try to give a little more historical and organizational background to the dispute. This, by the way is a dispute, in its general outlines, that has been going on in the American left movement at least since the fight over slavery in pre-Civil War days, if not earlier:

Expanded Note: For those who wince at my characterization of the recently held U.S. Social Forum (late June 2010 in Detroit) as a talk fest (actually talk/slugfest, for there are always elements of both especially when the organization question comes up) I will give a very compelling reason for that usage. And I will not even mention the various “anti-imperialist”, “anti- capitalist” sources, like the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and who knows who else, that funded this confab. I will make strictly leftist political points here.

2004, was a presidential election year and a year when the Democratic Party National Convention was held in Boston. That was the year, if you recall, that one Massachusetts U.S. Senator John Forbes Kerry was proclaimed the Democratic nominee. Senator Kerry, if you will also recall, voted with both hands and feet (or was it one hand and one foot) for President George W. Bush’s 2002 Iraq War resolution, among his other sins. Clearly a situation, in any case, for anti-war militants and others to stage a protest, a vocal one to boot, against the Democratic Party and its nominee at the convention site.

2004 was also a year that, not by chance, the U.S. Social Forum (made up of many anti-war and progressive organizations and individuals, as least that is what they alleged in their written propaganda) was held in Boston at the nearby University of Massachusetts/Boston campus at the same time as the convention. A perfect lash-up for a very strong and well-attended protest, right? (That was set, moreover, for the day before the convention started, a Sunday, and would not have interfered with a whole array of other “cause” events during the week.)

No such luck. The vast bulk of the more than 5000 attendees at the Forum ( I do not know the actual number who attended but that was the number that was bandied about then) could not find the time to tear themselves away, for a couple of hours, from some pressing anti-war or anti-imperialist workshop in order to hit the streets. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, were ordered not to so or discouraged from attending that protest by the Forum leadership or by their organizations. During that Sunday march to the Convention Center in Boston we ran into, few, too few, protesters who “broke ranks” with their leaderships and decided to attend a demonstration that had, in the end, about 1500 to 2000 attendees. That is one of the anecdotal sources for our argument; others included oral statements made to us (our local ad hoc anti-imperialist, anti-war committee) by leading members of organizations that held this “don’t go” position. I will address the written organizational wrangling below.

My group of local anti-war militants and I had our own political differences with the organizers of the Sunday protest (the ANSWER coalition). For example, we could not officially endorse the event because some of our people did not agree with Hands Off North Korea ( not the exact formulation, but that is the sense of it) slogan (some did, including myself) but when the deal when down and a simple anti-war statement had to be made the place for all militants was in front of the Democratic Party Convention Hall chanting our opposition to the Bush/Kerry (now Obama) Iraq and Afghan Wars. And that, in the nature of these things, is where all hell, all organizational hell, breaks out.

For those unfamiliar with the ANSWER coalition it too is an umbrella organization (more or less, although there is a great deal of overlap of organizations and personnel, at least locally in Boston) whose driving force is (or was then, as there has been a split) was the old Stalinoid Workers World Party. This coalition has been characterized by a bit more vocal militancy than the United For Peace And Justice (UJP)-types that form a core of the Social Forum (you know, Quakers, Shakers and assorted pacifists, good government-types, and top heavy with left academics) and a more confrontational aspect to its politics. Moreover it keeps bringing up those oddball things like uncritical defense of North Korea ( I believe they have been aiming for the American franchise, such as it is) that drives the UJP-types to distraction as they attempt to “convince” by rational argument the Democratic Party, the party of war and oppression, to do “the right thing.”

This kind of wrangling is hardly new, especially when there has been historically, as in America, no mass-based Labor or Communist party to fill the vacuum outside, and to the left , of bourgeois politics that would leave such organizations configurations far behind. So that is what we are up against. Still, united front possibilities or not, the place to be then, and now, was in the streets. At least once in a while. As I mentioned in my original note, fortunately, this year’s Social Forum was not interrupted by the need to deal with presidential elections; although I would have made a very strong case that the not very distant (from Detroit) Toronto meeting of the G-20, held at approximately the same time, could have used a few thousand more protestors, if the attendees could have torn themselves away from those lovely workshops in Detroit. Some things never change.