What is the price ?

A general requirement of an organized movement is to build and accumulate forces. Unity needs to be built not created. As a progressive myself, I am against imperialist wars of aggression, imperialist occupations, but I do support peoples’ struggles for liberation. I will not be generically against war. How could I take positions that are against the essence of my own existence?
We need a movement, a real genuine autonomous progressive movement. Start again a poor people campaign [working people] Not one that is ready to concede from the very start the essence of our interest

---

What is the price?

The Democratic presidential primary is still up for grabs. The more we advance, the more uncertain we are of the outcome. The only certainty is the uncertainty of the outcome. Barak Obama, the leading contender, is about 1 million votes ahead on the popular vote and also holds a lead on pledged delegates. But, most probably, the Democratic presidential candidate will be chosen not by our votes, but by lobbyists and “super-delegates” at the Democratic National Convention.

What’s is in it for us? Is it our destiny to keep fighting, organizing and mobilizing for the lesser evil to win? An old nemesis, a progressive friend of mine, (old not because of his age but rather because of his tendency to recycle a position that we should consider old due to the test of time), seems to be stuck on a political line of a broad united front to defeat evil; we need to unify behind the choice of a lesser evil. But the test of time yields results and thru results we have the opportunity to evaluate our positions, discard them or build new thoughts, new theories and finally define new social practices. If we simply disregard our experiences, then we are stuck. Our ideas become old, irrelevant, dogmatic and incapable of leading us to something new.

So for the past 20 years, my old friend has explained to me why we need a broad united front to beat evil, AND THE PRIZE WILL BE THE LESSER EVIL. My friend went as far as explaining to me the need to engage in this line because he is a product of it. By the way, not all the time did we end up with the lesser evil? We also ended up with the likes of Reagan, the Bushes, and we may even be ending up with the godfather of evil, McCain. But “luckily” also, during our friendship, we ended up with some lesser evils, and some near misses such as Gore or Kerry. So during our enduring friendship we have had an array of experiences with evils and lesser evils, we’ve won some and lost some.

Now, we are faced with a need to choose again! As two pit bulls, we are at it again. For me it is total absurdity to abide by the choice of a lesser evil. Evil is evil. What makes it lesser? I really do not know. But to the proponents of the lesser evil philosophy, including my friend, I ask: how could we be so blind about the actions of our lesser evil choices? Why are we so stuck on that choice? Life’s experiences have shown to us that they are only lesser evils as a prerequisite to taking power.

Even if our memory is not that sharp anymore, some recent events have proven to us that evil and lesser evil are just two sides of the same coin. It was our lesser evil that passed NAFTA and the Patriot Act and enacted drastic cutbacks in social services. Both evil and lesser evil have shown the same capacity not to listen to our interests. The question to ask is: WHAT PRICE ARE WE PAYING BY ALWAYS LIMITING OURSELVES TO THESE CHOICES? What de we get out of it?

Depending on our class origin, we could easily find out. The reason my friends and I are in constant struggle is because our objective class interests are opposed. All the struggles, their limitative content, context and objectives, are always absolutely based on class interests. See, this how we will understand why we spend so much energy and time, intellectually and physically, in stuff that has nothing to do with our interests as working people, or is just a sugar coating of false promises or, at best, wishful thinking.

The Civil Rights Movement started as a worker’s movement and rapidly became a movement of acceptance. We fought to have Black cops and found out that all cops, black and white, bleed blue. All cops have the same job: to enforce a system that is fundamentally unjust to us. We fought to bring Black issues to the forefront to find out that pastors, politicians and businessman are using Black issues to become successful capitalists. And damn anyone who tries to deny them these opportunities! In fact some of them are against Obama, just because he is a challenge to their livelihood.

I remember once, I was participating in an anti-sweatshop workshop, and we were criticizing a bunch of celebrities. No one dared to mention African-American celebrities. I mentioned Michael Jordan and a Sister tried to correct me by reminding me that it was normal for him to do so. So because of his complexion, Jordan was OK in exploiting workers, but not so an individual with a white complexion?

There is a dire need for building an autonomous popular movement in the U.S., but can we accomplish this in a wishy-washy broad united front where the basic principles of unity are so diluted that nothing in reality is being built other than a politician’s career? We have seen broad united fronts to support the lesser evils without identifying the real evils, capitalism and imperialism. A general requirement of an organized movement is to build and accumulate forces. Unity needs to be built not created. As a progressive myself, I am against imperialist wars of aggression, imperialist occupations, but I do support peoples’ struggles for liberation. I will not be generically against war. How could I take positions that are against the essence of my own existence?

We need a movement, a real genuine autonomous progressive movement. Start again a poor people campaign [working people] Not one that is ready to concede from the very start the essence of our interests.