[Marxism] The Akron foreclosure attempted suicide case

[Aaron Aarons]

>From: "Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo at gmail.com>
>Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 22:35:16 -0400

[SNIP]

>Maybe I'm crazy, but my read of the popular mood says if we can get the ball rolling with some action that captures the popular spirit and imagination, including possibly something like, yes, "physical" (in reality more like civil-disobedience, moral, symbolic) resistance to a particularly egregious example, complete with preachers, a couple of state legislators or city council people, and schoolchildren, and a squad of ACLU lawyers to befuddle the local gendarmerie, and GET IT ON THE LOCAL TV NEWS, the example is going to spread. Maybe not the first time or the second, but everything is favorable to that.

If preachers, legislators, etc. are willing to give at least moral support to effective direct action, that's fine. But it's not the task of the precious few anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist leftists in this damned country to become petty-bourgeois populist organizers. Revolutionaries should form united fronts with reformists, not popular fronts. Those, like most of us, who have a radical critique of capitalism should find ways of tying this critique in with a "What is to be done?" response to the immediated situations we deal with.

>The way to think big in this situation is to think small, the way to pose long-term strategic demands like a real "workers" nationalization is to think immediate and very tactically about "nationalizing"-- forcing a renegotiation or complete cancellation in favor of someone in OUR class-- of ONE mortgage, or the ones in one neighborhood, or from one bank, whatever the local situation leads to be the symbol of the foreclosure crisis.

What about also defending tenants who can't pay their rents because of unemployment or cutbacks in social benefits?

>The Countrywide/Bank of America settlement even gives this sort of thing a judicial precedent, or cover.
>
>One spark can start a prairie fire, as the Maoist comrades say, and we know from 1905 in Russia and the 1950's in the USA that the spark is all the more effective if associated with a preacher and the moral high ground.
>
>Think about PREACHING this issue in a Sunday sermon. That it is a SIN to throw a family with little children out of a home so it can sit empty because the moneychangers have moved from the temple to the white house and state house. Think in terms of taking to people about what is right, and just, and moral. IF they say we must give up $700 billion to the banks to save them from catastrophe because our fates our bound up with theirs, then the banks must give up a few thousand dollars in return. Think of how to present this to appeal to "the better angels of our natures" of regular people in the U.S.
>
>Like the case in Akron. Think of a SERMON around it. Take as your theme: "Why did it have to come to this?"
>
>Is mammon so heartless and cruel that only when this dear lady, born nearly a century ago, actually took a gun to herself that it realized the depths of its sins, of its crimes? Think of taking a message to the BROADEST masses, who despite all the indoctrination and ideological domination, still have some elementary sense of human solidarity, of "there, but for the grace of God, go I."

There are plenty of preachers in this country, but damned few materialist (in the philosohical sense) revolutionaries. The latter need to take every opportunity to contribute to clarity of thought, while at the same time unite in action with those whose minds are fogged by religious nonsense.

>It is ABOVE ALL that dread, there but for the grace of God go I, that I sense abroad in the population, that makes me think the iron is hot, and now is the time to STRIKE. To ACT.
>
>And FORGET for the moment about high-falootin' elitist, city-slicker, wine-sipping, fromage-and-suchi-eating, retreat-monkey French rhetoric like "nationalize the banks"

Personally, I'm more inclined to eat queso than fromage, though, thanks to the decline of the dollar, I'm being forced to eat cheese instead! >:-} As in an earlier discussion, Joaquin seems to express or, perhaps, parody the reactionary attitudes of some of those he hangs out with.

I too don't like the "nationalize the banks" slogan, but because it invokes dependence on the state rather than on direct action.

>(except, of course, with the handful of activists who will very quickly begin to stand out if you get a real movement going. Get those into a study group or circle or just monthly or twice monthly bullshit session, because THAT might well be the first unit in your locality of what in the future might be a real workers party in this country).
>
>But don't even THINK about raising nationalization "propagandistically" in a broad way *at this moment.* Try to understand it as the more backward elements in the movement you're trying to organize it would. It is double poison: to many people it will simply mean that you support the NEXT thing the ruling class is going to try to "nationalize" THEIR losses, but the enemies of the movement will use it to show your REAL aim is an American gulag.

We already have an American gulag. And talking about that gulag and its mostly Black and indigenous population needs to be part of our propaganda. (There's one housing situation where we favor evictions!)

>Maybe in San Francisco or New York that last consideration isn't applicable, but down here in Georgia, it sure is.

In which part of Georgia? White or Black? Urban or rural? What about the district Cynthia McKinney was elected from a few times?

>Joaquin

Aaron