SolidarityEconomy.net

by Mitchel Cohen, Brooklyn Greens/Green Party, and co-founder, Red Balloon Collective

FORTY YEARS IT’S BEEN. In October 1967, I was an 18-year-old junior at SUNY Stony Brook, organizing students to participate in the first militant demonstration on the East Coast against the Vietnam war. At the Pentagon.

Phil Ochs — my hero — was scheduled to perform at Stony Brook that night. Many students were saying they weren’t going on the march because they wanted to go to Phil’s concert instead. SDS wrote letter after letter trying to get him to change the date. No answer. Finally — oh, how it cut my heart out — we organized a boycott of his records. (more…)

Reviewed by Joseph Matthews

For those Guild members who know Paul Harris from his time as President of the NLG, the fact that he has written a book about characters with deep political convictions will come as no surprise. The same is true for those who know him as co-founder of the San Francisco Community Law Collective, or as the teacher of “guerrilla law” in his guise as Charles Garry Professor of Law at New College in San Francisco. That this novel presents a convincing and powerful historical account of the collision of radical politics and the “justice” system will also make perfect sense to anyone who has read his earlier non-fiction exposition of guerrilla law in action, Black Rage Confronts the Law (NYU Press, 1997). (more…)

Recently, correspondent “Wormbin” (an interesting nom de guerre) raised an important point regarding the continued and powerful influence of the “old school” veterans of the 60s’ and the overwhelmingly dominant approach that reduces organizing to around the terms of redistribution of our society’s wealth—more jobs, more benefits, better working conditions and cedes to capital the major decisions and initiative in organizing the power of the market and deciding on what to produce, how to produce it, management, technology, the terms of finance, etc.

Much of the left and activist movement is finally only comfortable with the mechanisms of the state as the defender of public and economic interests. Not that all the aspects of redistribution aren’t important—they must remain a key foundation of our efforts. They are required but insufficient as I argue in my earlier article on markets.

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