"Letter to the Left Establishment"

Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and "The Letter"

===
1.

Responding to the 'Letter to the Left Establishment'
regarding Obama

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

A so-called Letter to the Left Establishment critical
of the Obama administration has been circulating for a
few days.  The letter is a bit odd because if you do
not read it carefully, it appears that the people named
in the first paragraph, including yours truly, are
actually asking people to sign on.  In reality the
Letter is a criticism of several individuals who
offered varying degrees of support to the candidacy of
President Obama in 2008.  On the grounds of confusion
alone the Letter should be withdrawn and the
signatories should request that their names be removed.

"But what is odder to me is that the Letter has all
sorts of implications.  The Letter calls upon those
named in the first paragraph to criticize the policies
of the Obama administration, as if we have not.  It
implies that we have been silent about major decisions
of the Obama administration that have been wrong.  It
recites a list of decisions, approaches, etc., by the
Obama administration as if any of this is new to those
of us identified in the first paragraph.

"None of this is new.  And the authors of the Letter
should know that.  In fact, if they happened to have
been in a cave for the last couple of years and did not
keep up with the news, they could have Googled the
names of most of the people listed in the first
paragraph and found that we have been generally
outspoken in our criticisms as well as involved in
organizing to put pressure on the administration.

"For these reasons i have been trying to figure out
what the intent of the Letter actually is.

"I am not going to speak for anyone else.  In 2008 i
reluctantly came to the conclusion that a position of
critical support of Obama was the correct stand. 
"Reluctantly" because i had a number of concerns about
Obama, most of which have been realized.  Nevertheless
i was impressed by the congealing of forces that i
believed had the potential to do something progressive
in the political realm irrespective of the actions of
Obama-the-individual.  I actually still believe that
this is possible and not too late.

"In 2008, i and several others mentioned in the Letter
also suggested that if there was no pressure from the
Left and progressives on Obama, assuming he was
elected, that we would find ourselves in deep trouble. 
In fact, people used to joke with me immediately before
and immediately after the November 2008 election
because i would be asked how much of a honeymoon period
Obama should receive and my answer was always the same:
"24 hours." I insisted, as did many of my colleagues,
that we could not, in effect, give Obama any honeymoon
period and that pressure had to start from the
beginning.  We were correct.

"The Letter reads as if those named in the first
paragraph have been sitting on their hands or standing
at the gates refusing to permit the masses to pass
through and challenge Obama.  I am not sure whether the
authors are standing in some parallel universe, but in
this one i see no evidence of that at all.  There are
differences, some over tactics while others over
strategy, among those named in the first paragraph, but
precisely for that reason it is odd that the names
would all be thrown together as if someone were
actually trying to stir up confusion and promote
disinformation.  I don't know, but i have actually seen
a film much like this before.

"So, assuming that there is loving intent from the
authors--and i am certainly not critical of the
signatories--then i would say, i agree with many of the
criticisms they have offered of the Obama
administration; i have offered many of those criticisms
already; i have been active, as have most of my
colleagues, in trying to engage liberal and progressive
social forces in the need to both combat the political
Right as well as put the pressure on the Democrats;
and, guess what? I will continue to, and i am assuming
that my colleagues will as well.

"Oh, and while i am at it, one thing that the authors
of the Letter did not address was the question of the
African American electorate.  I don't know about you,
but how we handle the question of this administration
is particularly dicey when the African American
electorate feels, overwhelmingly, that Obama is under
an intense racist assault from the political Right
(which is, as you know, quite correct).  This basic
question of the African American electorate and huge
portions of the Latino electorate means that our
electoral tactics in the coming two years will have to
be handled very carefully, even while we put the
pressure on this administration and struggle against
its defense of warmed over neo-liberalism.

"It might have been a good idea, and this is only a
suggestion, for the authors of the Letter to have
reached out to those mentioned in the first paragraph
rather than trying to embarrass us.  It certainly would
have been more principled, but it would have also made
them look less foolish or mis-informed yet
well-intentioned individuals (which ever applies) when
one examines the actual record.

"In solidarity,

Bill Fletcher,Jr.

===
2.
Tom Hayden's Remarks: Weirdness...

So I started reading this letter which sounded pretty
good and it looked like I signed it, so I read further
and discovered that it was to as a member of a group I
didn't know I belonged to called the "Left
Establishment." As I kept reading, it was a vile, toxic
diatribe ending with a demand that I, along with the
rest of the "Left Establishment", endorse a
demonstration this week in Washington featuring civil
disobedience at the White House fence.

To whomever sent the letter, I have to say I'm sorry
that I just don't respond positively to nasty
invitations. I hope you can understand. Calm down and
tell me who you are before the conspiracy theories
mushroom.

Actually, I thought the Dec. 16 action seemed somewhat
justifiable in light of current events - the WikiLeaks
releases and erupting divisions within the Democratic
Party. And I love the people who plan to get arrested.
Maybe a big crowd will show up, but not because it was
a smart idea to begin with. Mid-December is not the
best time to turn out masses of people. But stuff
happens, and now many people are boiling.

My personal best to those who are being arrested. They
include a former Pentagon official, former CIA agent, a
former New York Times reporter, and a mother who lost a
son to war and was radicalized as a result. The lesson
for me is that people can change from hawks to doves,
from spies to whistleblowers, if organizers organize
and events reshape their perceptions. That's the lesson
of WikiLeaks, that folk on the inside sometimes come
find their situation intolerable and break away from
old thinking.

Civil disobedience is a moral expression, and can be a
personal healing. Sometimes it ignites a larger
movement, or inspires other individuals to step up. We
need more of it.

But I also think we need an outside/inside strategy
that shifts public opinion more and more against the
war. We need to persuade the undecided, not simply to
create images of dissent. The peace movement will grow
steadily in the months ahead, on its own, but also in
its relation to other compelling causes, among them:
Wall Street regulation, clean energy/green jobs, and
the steady shift towards an unfettered market
philosophy over our lives. Civil disobedience can light
a flame, but the case for thoroughgoing radical reform
must be made on our streets, our workplaces, our
religious institutions, and yes, within the Democratic
Party - whose overwhelming majority support progressive
objectives. Members of the Progressive Democrats of
America, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are
vital elements of our movement.

I would like every person who signed this letter to
read it again, and be kind enough to retract their
signatures or explain why.

This is not the time to inflict internal damage on a
community which is already weak enough. It's important
to get a grip.

The peace and justice community is a fragile form of
social ecology, with diversity being an essential
quality. Everyone is entitled to a different approach,
but there also is an essential unity that can be
achieved, unless a malign force is introduced.

I have been working every day since 2002 to end these
wars. I will never stop. I supported Barack Obama for
president in 2008, and am glad I did so. At the time I
also said progressives should disagree with him on
Afghanistan, NAFTA, global warming and Wall Street, and
I have pursued progressive alternatives every day. I
have been so busy on the WikiLeaks crisis since August
that I just haven't had time to drop by the White House
and pick up my marching orders.

TOM HAYDEN Director Peace and Justice Resource Center

===
3.

OPEN LETTER TO THE LEFT ESTABLISHMENT

This letter is a call for active support of protest to
Michael Moore, Norman Solomon, Katrina van den Heuvel,
Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank,
Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., and
other high profile progressive supporters of the Obama
electoral campaign.

With the Obama administration beginning its third year,
it is by now painfully obvious that the predictions of
even the most sober Obama supporters were overly
optimistic. Rather than an ally, the administration has
shown itself to be an implacable enemy of reform.

It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal
safety net (including the previously sacrosanct Social
Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for
substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights
and environmental protections, and expanded a massive
bailout further enriching an already bloated financial
services and insurance industry. It has continued the
occupation of Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan
as well as our government's covert and overt wars in
South Asia and around the globe.

Along the way, the Obama administration, which referred
to its left detractors as "f***ing retarded"
individuals that required "drug testing," stepped up
the prosecution of federal war crime whistleblowers,
and unleashed the FBI on those protesting the
escalation of an insane war.

Obama's recent announcement of a federal worker pay
freeze is cynical, mean-spirited "deficit-reduction
theater". Slashing Bush's plutocratic tax cuts would
have made a much more significant contribution to
deficit reduction but all signs are that the
"progressive" president will cave to Republican demands
for the preservation of George W. Bush's tax breaks for
the wealthy Few. Instead Obama's tax cut plan would
raise taxes for the poorest people in our country.

The election of Obama has not galvanized protest
movements. To the contrary, it has depressed and
undermined them, with the White House playing an active
role in the discouragement and suppression of dissent -
with disastrous consequences. The almost complete
absence of protest from the left has emboldened the
most right-wing elements inside and outside of the
Obama administration to pursue and act on an ever more
extreme agenda.

We are writing to you because you are well-known
writers, bloggers and filmmakers with access to a range
of old and new media, and you have in your power the
capacity to help reignite the movement which brought
millions onto the streets in February of 2003 but which
has withered ever since. There are many thousands of
progressives who follow your work closely and are
waiting for a cue from you and others to act. We are
asking you to commit yourself to actively supporting
the protests of Obama administration policies which are
now beginning to materialize.

In this connection we would like to mention a specific
protest: the civil disobedience action being planned by
Veterans for Peace involving Chris Hedges, Daniel
Ellsberg, Joel Kovel, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern,
several armed service veterans and others to take place
in front of the White House on Dec. 16th.

Should you commit yourselves to backing this action and
others sure to materialize in weeks and months ahead,
what would otherwise be regarded as an emotional
outburst of the "fringe left" will have a better chance
of being seen as expressing the will of a substantial
majority not only of the left, but of the American
public at large. We believe that your support will help
create the climate for larger and increasingly
disruptive expressions of dissent - a development that
is sorely needed and long overdue.

We hope that we can count on you to exercise the
leadership that is required of all of us in these
desperate times.

Best Regards,

Sen. James Abourezk Michael Albert Tariq Ali Rocky
Anderson Jared Ball Russel Banks Thomas Bias Noam
Chomsky Bruce Dixon Frank Dorrel Gidon Eshel Jamilla
El-Shafei Okla Elliott Norman Finkelstein Glen Ford
Joshua Frank Margaret Flowers M.D. John Gerassi Henry
Giroux Matt Gonzalez Kevin Alexander Gray Judd
Greenstein DeeDee Halleck John Halle Chris Hedges Doug
Henwood Edward S. Herman Dahr Jamail Derrick Jensen
Louis Kampf Allison Kilkenny Jamie Kilstein Joel Kovel
Mark Kurlansky Peter Linebaugh Scott McLarty Cynthia
McKinney Dede Miller Russell Mokhiber Bobby Muller
Christian Parenti Michael Perelman Peter Phillips Louis
Proyect Ted Rall Cindy Sheehan Chris Spannos Paul
Street Sunil Sharma Stephen Pearcy Jeffrey St. Clair
Len Weinglass Cornel West Sherry Wolf Michael Yates
Mickey Z Kevin Zeese 

___________________________________________

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