[Sosfbay-discuss] Fwd: STATEMENT FROM THE JAMAICA PLAIN/BOSTON CHAPTER OF THE GREEN-RAINBOW PARTY CONCERNING THE OCTOBER 29 DEMONSTRATION

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Green Friends,

See below an e-mail I have just received through the e-lists of the 
Black Caucus of the Green Party.

It's a statement from the Boston Chapter of the Green-Rainbow Party 
withdrawing support from the next round of antiwar demonstrations in 
Boston. Green-Rainbow is the name of the Green Party in Massachusetts, 
which I happen to know was partly organized by Mel King, a legendary, 
longtime African-American progressive leader going all the way back to 
the 1950s.

I hate to say "I Told You So" but I told you so. See, it's not just me. 
E-mails like this are showing up in my in-box every day. It is not that 
the liberals in Boston or New York or California are doing anything 
today than anything they have been doing for the last twenty years.

But since Katrina, something HAS HAPPENED. The Washington Post actually 
reported a scientific poll in which the approval rating for George W. 
Bush has actually dropped to 2%. You read that right. That's T-W-O 
percent. Another poll said it had dropped to somewhere between 8% and 
12%. David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for 
Political and Economic Studies, which tracks African American public 
opinion, explained that anything below 10%, in this kind of poll is 
statistically "about as low as you can go."

In the Washington Post article Democratic pollster Peter Hart put it 
very well. African-Americans never liked Bush. 92% voted against him in 
the 2000 election. Nevertheless, Hart says:

"African Americans were not supporters, but I don't think that they 
outright detested him -- until now,"

Yes. Now we really hate the bastard and all of his cronies and enablers 
and any "liberal" or pain-in-the-ass "moderate" who doesn't get it is 
gonna be in trouble.

Alex Walker

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 14:56:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: STATEMENT FROM THE JAMAICA PLAIN/BOSTON CHAPTER OF THE 
GREEN-RAINBOW PARTY CONCERNING THE OCTOBER 29 DEMONSTRATION

Statement from the Jamaica Plain/ Boston Green-Rainbow concerning the 
October 29 demonstration
After a discussion of two documents released by the District 7 Advisory 
Committee with respect to their present and future stance toward the 
antiwar movements, we are withdrawing our support of the upcoming 
demonstration on October 29.

We are a multiracial chapter of the Green-Rainbow Party, and we have 
watched with concern the dynamics of building the antiwar movement in 
this city over the past three years.

We note with alarm that these demonstrations have been mostly of white 
people in a city with upwards of 50 percent persons of color and 
upwards of 80 per cent persons of color in an essentially segregated 
public school system.

We note with alarm that the antiwar movement both in Boston and in the 
United States as a whole is very good at doing demonstrations, both 
local and national. But after the demonstrations are over, few of the 
people involved are to be found working day-to-day on the life- issues 
concerning poor people and working people in general, and people of 
color in particular.

We note with alarm that many sectors and organizations engaged in 
antiwar activities are more concerned with organizational/ ideological 
hegemony in a movement that finds itself small in comparison to where 
it needs to be in numbers. We don't believe that such behavior can lead 
to the day when multitudes of people in our country to sign on to such 
activity.

We view the documents put forth by District 7 AC as an invitation and a 
way out of this impasse. We have been invited to turn our understanding 
of building the antiwar movement on its head, by recognizing that what 
we need to be building is a know justice, know peace movement based on 
the targeting of war, racism, and exploitation, called for so 
brilliantly by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967, and for which he 
paid with his life. And we agree with District 7 AC that it's not 
enough to give lip service to these concerns, or even to place the most 
righteous and militant words on a leaflet.

We join District 7 in calling for building a movement that's going to 
take time to build, commitment of a sort that calls upon everyone in 
many ways to begin thinking outside the box in order to build that 
movement of know justice know peace that can save our world, our 
peoples from the consequences of where those now in power would lead 
us. And we look forward to working with District 7 AC, both accepting 
their leadership and earning the ability to work with them in 
partnership.

-----End Original Message-----