Today's Topics:
1. Greece, Common struggles of all the exploited and oppressed
by Anarchists Convention on Social and Class Emancipation (gr)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. wsm.ie: Conversations about Anarchism discussions return to
Dublin - Nov 15th (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. wsm.ie: Revolution in Rojava reading group (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Greece, ese-Athens: Workers Counter Bulletin #134 (gr)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. US, black rose fed-Los Angele: GAY LIBERATION THROUGH
SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE
LAVENDER AND RED
UNION'S GAY COMMUNISM (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
For a world without borders and nations, without exploitation and oppression - both inside
the Western states and in the capitalist periphery countries, the total attack of the
state and the bosses against society has resulted in even more poverty and misery,
intensification working conditions, intensification of control and repression, destruction
of whole regions and the uprooting. - The wars and the gloomy situation that has developed
in a number of Middle Eastern countries, Asia and Africa of the powerful capitalist states
of the West result, the mass movement of refugees and migrants to western countries. ----
To curb this that the rulers themselves huge influx of displaced created, the EU
strengthened FRONTEX and upgraded its institutional role and approved the NATO engagement
in border and proceeded in accordance with the Turkish state to facilitate deportations.
Since the beginning of 2016 even a series of states of the West proceeded to close their
borders, raising walls, thus trapping thousands of people in the country of entry. This
entrapment loomed quite clearly that we fixed, opening more and more concentration camps
which were forced to settle refugees and immigrants, preventing them not only to move to
any European country willing but limiting their movement and within the country of entry
which they were trapped.
The Greek state, the "benevolent" rhetoric and humanitarian mask attempts otherwise
conceal the deepening of paranomopoiisis refugees and immigrants - achieved by the
intensification of repression, sorting and deportations, keeping the fence in Evros and
creating constantly new enclosures, ie plasma concentration camps. Through the media
attempt to inhibit the spontaneous, sincere Mr healthy movement from below for Mr mutual
solidarity while cultivating and awaken preservatives reflective of society, and promoting
sigontarontas any neo-Nazi and fascist construct. A typical example is the view of the
argument that children of refugees and immigrants are a health bomb, an rhetoric that
fills their xenophobic attitudes. A rhetoric that is not symptomatic in this period as the
state wanting to control and subdue refugees and migrants trapped in Greece moves to
impose new security measures, which are part of subordination treaties they want to impose
on society as a whole . To proceed with the establishment campaign of modern
totalitarianism attempt to derail the social wrath, promoting social cannibalism, ie
rotate one oppressed against each other, and to accomplish this should be able to break
the image of tired war refugee and replaced by the image of the internal enemy.
The key task of moving the concentration camps of refugees and immigrants is to control
and isolate it from the public area. This condition of isolation coupled with their
exclusion from social goods and social life, build their marginalization and can easily
lead to the progressive ghettoisation and of themselves, which will attempt to fend off
the "inhospitable locals." The attempted existence of refugees and migrants in a parallel
rather than simultaneous social everyday life makes it difficult to hear the claims of
both the opening of borders and the free movement and to improve the conditions of life in
the here and now. At the same time, it becomes increasingly difficult to create links of
solidarity with the locals exploited and oppressed. While the attempt to make them as
invisible as possible, makes them more vulnerable in the face of violence and misery
reserving for them the Greek State when no one would see them in concentration camps.
The games in the Greek detention center, dozens of solidarity movements in Victoria Square
and in Piraeus, refugee and immigrant marches in the city center, the hunger strikes,
uprisings in the camps (as happened recently in the concentration camp at Moria, Lesvos )
for better living conditions and freedom of movement help create communities struggle and
form deposits in promoting social and class solidarity and total struggle against state
and capitalist barbarism.
From our side as anarchists, as part of the exploited and oppressed must resist the hill
of barbed wire. To reclaim them our free universal access to all social services (health,
housing, education). To sharpen the struggle for a world without states, papers, borders
and exploitation. Preceded and move on the path of solidarity among all the oppressed.
Together with refugees and immigrants stand in solidarity alongside one another and build
in our everyday relationships and those structures that promote our vision of a society of
equality, freedom and justice.
To tear down the fences and erase the borderline
To subvert the world of power, pillage and inequality
To build a world of equality, freedom and solidarity
The Anarchists Convention on Social and Class Emancipation calls Thursday 3/11 at 21.00,
the Gini building Polytechnic discussion organized course in the concentration camp in Eleonas
Anarchist Meeting on Social and Class Emancipation
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Message: 2
Interested in anarchism and looking for others to talk about it with and maybe get your
questions answered? Conversations about Anarchism is returning this November and all are
welcome. ---- Conversations about Anarchism is a facilitated discussion group that takes
and collectively answers some questions designed to help us explore what anarchism is
about and what anarchists do. ---- The event takes place in the WSM space in Jigsaw.
Jigsaw is the old Seomra Spraoi social centre space and currently propvides a home for the
WSM, Rabble, DDR and a regular meeting spot for a number of campaign groups. It's located
at 10 Belvedere court. Belvedere Court is the laneway just north of Mountjoy square, see
the FB evdent below for a map.
See you on the 15th at 19.30!
http://www.wsm.ie/c/conversations-about-anarchism-dublin-nov15th2016
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Message: 3
A very significant book on the Rojava revolution has just been published. It's called
Revolution in 'Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan' and
provides a detailed account of the structures of the revolution, social, economic, legal
and military. We've found it so useful that we are not only encouraging others to read it
but are going to hold a series of three reading groups so we can talk about what is
happening and what relevancy it has as an example to those of us in Ireland. ---- The book
is summarised as "A new kind of society is being built in Syria, but it's not one you
would expect. Surrounded by deadly bands of ISIS and hostile Turkish forces, the people
living in Syria's Rojava cantons are carving out one of the most radically progressive
societies on the planet today. Western visitors have been astounded by the success of
their project, a communally organised democracy which considers women's equality
indispensable and rejects reactionary nationalist ideology whilst being fiercely
anti-capitalist. The people of Rojava call their new system democratic confederalism. An
implementation of the recent ideology of the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, it
boasts gender quotas of 40 percent, bottom-up democratic structures, deep-reaching
ecological policies and a militancy which is keeping ISIS from the gates. Revolution in
Rojava is the first full-length study of this ongoing social and political transformation
in Syrian Kurdistan. It is the first authentic insight into the complex dimensions of the
revolution. Its authors use their own experiences of working and fighting in the region to
construct a picture of hope for Middle-Eastern politics and society, and reveal an
extraordinary story of a battle against the odds."
Dilar Dirik, journalist and activist of the Kurdish Women's Movement
''Written by long-time activists of the Kurdish freedom movement, this book is the first
authentic insight into the complex dimensions of Rojava's radical revolution. From
autonomous women's communes to ecological cooperatives to multiethnic peoples'
self-defense, the authors let us enter a world of freedom cries - a deeply human
grassroots revolution with the potential to change the course of Middle Eastern
civilization. Recommended for all believers in humanity.''
John Holloway, Autonomous University of Puebla and author of Crack Capitalism
''The Kurdish revolution of Democratic Autonomy is of enormous importance for the future
of the world. It points a possible way forward out of the tragedy of the Middle East, and
more than that: a possible way forward out of the catastrophe that is capitalism. This
book is of great help...A careful and detailed account that is filled with personal
narrative, it is both easily accessible and very informative.''
Interview with Ercan Ayboga (who spoke at this years Dublin anarchist bookfair)
Q. Tell us, in a nutshell, which ones do you think are the most important lessons from
Rojava to progressive people elsewhere?
There are several lessons in our opinion. The first lesson is overcoming the nation-state
in practice while building an alternative, not only at a theoretical level. All cultural,
ethnic and religious identities can find themselves in the new political structures and
political dynamics developed after the revolution of Rojava. Here an important progress
could be made in reality. This aspect is crucial for any basic democratic development in
the Middle East, but also in other parts of the world. If this approach becomes stronger
in our world, we will have less conflicts and wars.
The second lesson is rejecting the state and strengthening society by building up direct
democratic and self-governing structures from the lowest levels of society. The challenge
is to give power to the communities which coordinate themselves on a voluntary basis. They
will build up a new political system, but from the bottom up. The difference to
parliamentarian systems is that the local communities - in Rojava they are called communes
in the residential streets, and people's councils on the neighborhood level - are the main
power holders and cannot be dominated by the upper structures. Here the revolution has
done some progress, but needs much more to be done. There are challenges and limitations
since other actors are not in favor of direct democracy. These the revolution must handle
too. Nevertheless the revolution does not give up and insists in its ideology.
The third and very crucial lesson is the liberation of women. Without the ongoing women's
liberation, the revolution never would have been successful. The liberation of women,
which is also the liberation of men and all other genders in the end- has started to be
taken seriously by all political, economic, social and cultural structures in Rojava.
People have started to criticize relentlessly the patriarchal ways of acting and thinking
in their lives. Social and cultural liberation has the pre-condition of the liberation of
women - this now we understand better thanks to the Rojava revolution.
Finally the revolution has given practical experience on how to develop an economy which
is as self-reliant as possible, which has been also a necessity because of the embargo.
Thus the embargo could have the opposite effect to that intended by Turkey, the KDP, the
Syrian state and the jihadists-salafists. In developing such an economy, the ecological,
solidarity and anticapitalist components are fundamental. Each of them presuppose one
another. From this experience, progressive people and movements can learn too.
A continued successful revolution in Rojava will change and probably end in the middle
term the war in Syria and have a strong impact on Northern Kurdistan and Turkey. It will
affect directly the whole of the Middle East which is at the centre of the global
conflicts of our times.
Extracted from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29680
Ercan Ayboga at this years Dublin anarchist bookfair
The discussions will take place in the WSM space in Jigsaw, 10 Belvedere Court in Dublin.
Jigsaw is the old Seomra Spraoi building see the map at the Facebook event for the
location of Seomra is also valid for Jigsaw.
The first discussion will take place Thursday November 17th at 19.30. Everyone is welcome
to take part. We will be covering the first six sections of the book in this session.
If there is a high level of interest we may split the session into two or more discussion
groups to allow everyone to participate.
You'll find the book at
Pluto Press (publisher) http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745336596
Book Depository https://www.bookdepository.com/Revolution-Rojava-Michael-Knapp/9780745336596
Amazon.UK at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolution-Rojava-Democratic-Liberation-Kurdistan/dp/0745336647
http://www.wsm.ie/c/revolution-rojava-reading-group-dublin-nov2016
------------------------------
Message: 4
Articles of ERC , Sheet Counter Workers , Working Material Since ERC Athens ---- Beating
migrant worker on October 21 in New Heraklion complains assembly Centauri and Mr. al et a
concentration of Thursday, November 3 at 17:00 outside the hosiery Konstantinos Petrakis
Street 83 Dawn in N. Iraklio. The relevant call of the Assembly centaur says: on October
21, a migrant worker who worked in clothing factory (hosiery) in N. Iraklio was attacked
by his boss, Konstantinos Petrakis, fired and aT Heraklionnot accepted the lawsuit
Pakistani worker filed requesting money (fee). More specifically, the Aftamp Ahmed,
working in clothing, went to work at N. Iraklio. Working in hosiery with employer
Konstantinos Petrakis last five months, a fee of EUR 4 per hour. Stamps requested by the
employer who had promised that he will put directly. From the beginning there was racist
behavior by the employer. In forced to collect garbage just entering the workplace while
the "bathed" with vile insults of Pakistani origin.
The episode employer racist violence began when the boss asked Aftamp make extra packing
job from another laborer work. He told his boss that another worker had informed how to do
the same packing job. Then the boss started screaming: "I am the boss, not bullshit. When
you do not like to leave Pakistan asshole. "The Aftamp went to get his things to leave.
When he turned and said to his boss: "You owe me stamps" the boss attacked him, struck him
in the face, knocked him down and caught him by the arms from the neck. With the
intervention of other workers left him. After he asked the worker to sign a paper that
does not owe stamps, which the worker refused to do. Then his employer shouted: "If you
make a complaint, not only wood as now, but will find you and kill you." And the notice
calling the Meeting As Centauri concludes: not frighten us nor our surprise terrorism in
particular bosses against the workers such as migrants, who even consider legally weak
compared to local workers. The class solidarity between the oppressed, dignity and the
right of the race will crush them.
*
Another worker was killed at the time of work . It is a 45-year worker who was the Monday,
October 24 lost n life, the marble factory s "Kavazi and SIA OE" Drama. For us it is
another employer murder in vom terms of profit, the "competitiveness", intensifying of
work and the lack of the required safety measures. This is the third fatal occupational
"accident" in the Marble industry in the region of Drama past six months.
*
New mobilizations went last week employees of the IGME, demanding to s the Thun real
solutions to the problems of the Institute who daily grow threatening operation.
Specifically, on Tuesday 25 Oktovri held a three-hour work stoppage and protest, the
Ministry of Environment and Wednesday 26 Oktovri held a three-hour work stoppage and
protest at the General Accounting Office.
*
Y or Clearing allele c c al th of what the working or l indirect formation N indirect let
John t let the Sanitize indirect legal PF than what the commercial or Enterprises i NAIL
STATION saying in South indirectly a John t a. The resolution states inter alia: S. al
accordance with complaint of employee labor inspection. In this shop the PF He worked in
company with 8-hour time to 7.5 months 'black' as a warehouseman. Then of about hiring a 4
hour time contract and similar remuneration, and actually worked 8 hours and even on two
different parts of the company (shop and warehouse), and in the summer for some time
worked 12-hour, as well as whenever the employer required intensive production. The actual
fee was 8 hour fee, but the gifts and benefits were based on the 4-hour contract. Note
that the PF He was the only employee in the company, since the employer "did not come" to
recruit and another employee. When the colleague began to pursue their accrued benefits
and gifts based on actual pay and demanded to make use of the remaining leave entitlement,
( one weeks), while the employers originally gave permission two days later proceeded to
dismissal threat if the colleague not return to work before the end of. My colleague did
not succumb to blackmail, and after returning from leave, the employer proceeded to the
dismissal of that because it was not accepted by the employee, made threats and attempted
physical violence, as well were received threatening phone calls possibly kickback of
type, in order to avoid complaints from part. The colleague fled a complaint to the labor
inspection and the IKA, claiming accrued and compensation. On 2/11 will be the discussion
of the complaint. The above incident of course is not an isolated or something unknown for
those / s working in the trade sector. The difference is that my colleague did not choose
the path of silence and obedience, but decided to assert the obvious, accrued and stamps
which owed him. We urge all workers to resist any attempt employer arbitrariness. Enough
Anymore! Read the entire text of the resolution here .
*
INITIATIVE primary unions for coordinating, on the ba if t j s decisions meeting
grassroots unions and collectives 12/10, call for a new massive open race meeting on
Monday, October 31 at the offices of the Teachers Federation of Greece (ILO), Xenophon 15a
3rd floor in 6.00 pm In calling the Initiative states: There goes another, must now
immediately to organize the resistance and continuity of our struggle. We do not expect
anything from the GSSE and the appointed administration of the EWC, the ADEDY the majority
of xekarfoma decided for a strike on the eve of the conference. We call call in every
union in the public and private sector, each fighter and militant collective, workers,
unemployed and youth in all class trade union forces, discuss and organize a truly
uncompromising and coordinated fight by all means on the next time.
*
Barrage of strikes in the coming days. 24 hour warning strike progressing the «Microfill
workers - K. Zafranas SA» Monday, October 31. The strike will be against four dismissals
while unionists. Escalating mobilizations decided the hotel employees in the K m for the
near future. Occasion or stood developments in the pension fund, TAPIT. 24 hour strike on
November 24 Download t mind the sailors. Mobilisation for Thursday 3/11 have decided
hospital workers throughout the country, in response to the redundancies auxiliary
doctors. Continue in the near future their mobilizations workers in "Children's Shelter".
*
Repeated 24-hour strikes on Monday 17 and Tuesday, October 18 made by the workers in ELGA
(Agency for compensation for farmers). Demanding the implementation of the Collective
Bargaining Agreement signed.
*
Gathering at the Emergency Department of "Evangelismos hospital" held Tuesday, October 25
workers. Oppose the unjust verdict against worker, along with other colleagues were
accused of fire incident, which had set 2010 female patient, with the same losing their
lives and many patients and workers at risk seriously.
*
Reuptake sacked employee dismissed the pre-last week in Preveza branch of supermarket
chain "AB Vassilopoulos" require workers in the enterprise and sectoral union.
*
Employers threats to the newly created business association of workers in «Sheraton hotel
in Rhodes. Immediately after the establishment of the association, the owner company
began, through its executives, attack targeting founding members of the association,
employing threats to force them to sign affidavits with which say they withdraw their
signatures to the memorandum the Association.
CALL TO SOLIDARITY APPEAL FOR TRIAL SYNTROFISSAS arrested in strike COURSE IN FEBRUARY OF
2011, addresses the Assembly of Resistance and Solidarity of Kypseli / Patission, and
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 is set to -after anavoles- Appeals from the trial
synagonistrias Lida Sofianou and two other demonstrators arrested on strike on February 23
2011.
*
The fight against Scherzo Cafe continues - Solidarity Gathering at Maroussi district court
Thursday 3/11, 9am. On the fifth 3/11 will be the court for the case scherzo cafe (where
fellow immigrant who worked at that store was beaten by his boss because claimed the
accrual of, here the link of the case:
http://somateioserbitoronmageiron.blogspot.gr/search?q=scherzo .The Waiters Cooks
Association and other employees of the catering industry calls a SOLIDARITY GATHERING in
Maroussi district court Thursday, the 3rd / 11 at 9:00 a.m..
*
Finally, concentration organize Thursday 3/11 in the National Resistance Square in Athens
retirees for the cuts in supplementary pensions. A similar protest outside the Volos
branch of RPHL organize, Monday 31/10, the prefecture of Magnesia pensioners.
Tags: anarcho-syndicalism , work release , AAR Athens
https://ese.espivblogs.net/2016/10/31/31-10-2016/
------------------------------
Message: 5
This interview looks at the development, history, politics, and legacy of the Lavender and
Red Union, an early gay communist political organization that was based in Los Angeles
from 1974 to 1977. M., a militant of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation, sat down with
Walt Senterfitt, a former member of the Lavender and Red Union (which was also briefly
known as the Red Flag Union), in his home in Boyle Heights, LA, to see what today's
revolutionaries can learn from the unique history of the Lavender and Red Union. The
interview was done for the Turkish queer magazine Kaos GL Dergisi, and was first published
in Turkish there in September 2016. ---- Although we don't agree with all of Lavender and
Red's specific politics (which should be seen as a product of their time and of their
relationship to the rest of the mid-'70s US left), we can gain a lot from studying the
experiences they made during their brief life before they decided to merge with the
Spartacist League in 1977. One of the points that came up in this interview again and
again was the perspective that queer people will not be able to win alone. If we want
liberation, then we will need to fight together in the same struggles as all the other
oppressed groups that make up the working class with us. We cannot only focus on building
organizations that just address our own concerns or our own narrow community (which the
Lavender and Red Union called ‘sectoralism'). This lesson, and many of the other points
discussed in this interview, continue to be of importance for those of us who struggle
with pushing back against the liberal, reformist, and class collaborationist tendencies in
our movements.
M: You grew up in the south?
Walt: I grew up in the south, mostly in northern Florida in the era of de jure Jim Crow
racial segregation. Being in an officially legally segregated society - schools, public
facilities, neighborhoods - and my reaction against it, which was based largely on a
religious impulse initially, was what initially propelled my political awakening. However,
it was kind of stunted because I was a white kid in a fairly backward small Southern town
without any allies or anybody much to learn from even. So I would follow things through
the news, like the awakening civil rights movement of the late '50s and early '60s. When I
began to try to reach out to young black people on the other side of town, I quickly got
squelched rather vigorously by the town fathers coming down on my parents and threatening
to fire them from their jobs if they didn't shut up their noisy and traitorous kid. So we
worked out a compromise that I would cool it for six months in exchange for leaving home
early and going to college in the north. Which I thought would be a decisive act of
liberation and freedom because I would get away from a small Southern town.
M: And go to someplace where everything was enlightened....
Walt: Where everything was enlightened, non-racist, and kind! Well of course that also led
to my political awakening at the next stage. Oh! It's not just the south! Racism is not
simply a southern problem. It just has a different accent up here, and different forms.
But my political activity was still within the confines largely of liberalism, but
inspired by the Southern black civil rights movement and I was in fact organizing fellow
university students from the north to support it, and to travel down south and participate
in voter registration, and Freedom Summer, and liberation schools and things like that.
And then increasingly also turning to community organizing in poor communities in northern
cities. I dropped out of university without finishing. Partly over conflict over feeling
impulses towards being gay but not being able to accept that yet, or not having a context,
or not knowing anybody else.
M: You weren't in contact with any gay community?
Walt: No. Now remember this period was pre-Stonewall, we're talking early-to-middle '60s.
I worked with SDS[Students for a Democratic Society]and a group called the Northern
Student Movement in Philadelphia after I dropped out and then moved to Washington D.C.,
worked for the National Student Association, which was basically a confederation of
student governments. Unbeknownst to me until later it turned out to have been
substantially secretly funded by the CIA together with thirty or forty other cultural and
educational and artistic organizations in the US as a Cold War tactic because of the US
government knowing that it wanted to be able to operate in third world and left movements
internationally but wouldn't be able to get any traction if it were doing that in the
government's own name.
M: So the whole story of the Lavender and Red Union goes back to the CIA.
Walt: No, but my own history does! So I ended up accidentally coming across this
information and helping to expose it, in 1966, 1967. The government was at first going to
deny it, but we had enough inside information that could corroborate it. So I got a call
in the middle of the night from the controller of the NSA, the person who oversaw the
relationship and the funding from the CIA, and he put this guy on the phone who at least
said - and this was at three o'clock in the morning - that he was Richard Helms, head of
the CIA, and he told me "Young man, you've betrayed your country..."
M: Congratulations!
Walt: "...we have ways to do deal with people, like drafting you and sending you to the
front lines of Vietnam." I did stuff like write up the story and put it in a safe deposit
box and write stuff telling my parents that if something happens to me.... But fortunately
it became a big enough story with national press, and then they started unraveling all
these different other organizations.... So I was an embarrassment but it also gave us some
protection. Anyway. Not too long after that I left the NSA and moved to - I got married -
moved to San Francisco, started an alternative school, was involved in the counterculture.
And other ways of, you know, the whole mid-late '60s stuff that we were going to...
M: So you were kind of generically political. You didn't have a particular direction.
Walt: I knew that I was committed to social justice, to building a new society, but I was
not primarily political in any organized way. Then in the course of that I also began to
realize that I was queer, and that ultimately my marriage was not going to be sustainable
in that context, so I came out, but fairly late, in my late 20s. This was two or three
years after Stonewall. Stonewall helped me come out 'cause all of a sudden - OK, here are
people that I can identify with, at least the radical wing of gay liberation was something
that I could identify with. So I got involved in that a little bit late. Particularly
since I moved back to Washington which was a bit late, since Washington D.C. has tended to
be politically behind other parts of the country. For example, when I moved back to D.C.
in '72 and the next year '73, I hooked up with a group of people and we wanted to propose
the first gay pride in Washington, and we got shot down violently by the nascent gay
community - "Oh no! You'll turn everybody against us! It will set us back for two years!"
- just to have an open gay pride, which was already happening in New York, San Francisco,
LA. So Washington was a few years later.
M: Had you been to a gay pride march before then?
Walt: No. I left San Francisco and I came out, and had been dealing with it pretty much on
a personal level. So when I got to D.C. I was involved at the gay community level in terms
of institution building, like helped to start a counseling center that was peer-based and
sort of liberatory-based, not psychologically-based, started an alternative to bars for
people that didn't drink or didn't like the atmosphere of bars to have social dances and
interaction, started a VD clinic which later grew into a health clinic for gay men and
ultimately for lesbian women.
M: That's a lot of things to start. Seems like you were very active.
Walt: Yeah, I was active. I was politically involved with what was left of the Gay
Activist Alliance, which had already kind of gone rapidly up and down in DC. We fought
things like the discriminatory and racist behavior of the gay bars. They would triple card
black gay men in the city, or they would have a quota that when a bar got up to more than
10 or 15 percent black patrons, then they would start discouraging any more coming in on
the theory that too many black people would discourage white patrons from coming. So we
were fighting racism within the gay community, or within the institutions that serve the
gay community. And with the people I was organizing with and with my own experience,
looking back over the last few years, we became unhappy with this community building
counterculture method of social change, and also with liberal pressure group politics for
democratic rights.
M: Why were you unhappy with this? What did you see was limiting yourselves?
Walt: We weren't getting anywhere. Except short-term and limited demands. And the more you
got involved and the more you opened your eyes, you saw that it was an interconnected
system of exploitation and oppression, not just a question of a bad policy of the
government, or incomplete or imperfect democracy, or not giving enough rights or equality
to one group or another. It was a little inchoate but it was largely frustration with a
lack of vision. I also personally felt frustrated with the New Left. We were basically
informed by the New Left, and one of the things that was typical of the New Left is the
old left is bad. They were wrong. That's associated with the Soviet Union. Nobody wants
anything to do with them. At best they're stodgy, conservative, bureaucratic.... But the
part that was frustrating me about this was that we didn't have anything to learn from the
people who came before us. So frustration, or the New Left running its course, led to a
number of people who were looking for a chance to study history and a chance to find
theory that made sense, that would help explain the world, system, capitalism. At the same
time there were beginning to be these generally Maoist pre-party formations, they called
themselves - collectives that were aspiring to become part of the new communist movement,
towards building a new party.
M: You mean like Revolutionary Union?
Walt: Yeah. Revolutionary Union, October League. Some of them had been around before, like
the Progressive Labor Party. The Communist Workers' Party. And then some of the Trotskyist
movement, which had been pretty much off to the side, but present, started coming in and
intervening with the New Left in one way or another. So anyways, we found a woman who is
now identified as a Maoist, who was a former Communist Party leader who had come down from
New York to D.C. in the late '30s, early '40s. She agreed to teach the rest of us Marxism.
So we collectively studied. We had a study group complex, as we called it, and there were
125 of us in 10 different groups of 12. So I got involved, while continuing the kind of
the things that I've described before, in studying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought -
MLM-T3. On the one hand it was very exciting and it was like the first time I had read or
study Marxism, other than reading the Communist Manifesto when I was a college freshman.
This was like turning on the lights in a tunnel. It was like, Wow! Oh, yeah! OK! Class
struggle! Working class! Capital! Fundamental contradiction! Exploitation! Class struggle
driving motor force of history! Having that framework, rather belatedly, you know, because
I was thirty years old or something coming to this, was exciting. We started having this
trouble though, because I brought up homosexuality in the study group complex, and this
woman said "No, we can discuss it, but the line's going to be unless you can show me
different, unless you can show me the material basis for homosexuality and it's
theoretical contribution to revolutionary struggle or the working class, you just
basically need to know what's wrong with it. That it's like bourgeois...."
M: Bourgeois decadence?
Walt: Yeah... a symptom of bourgeois decadence. She wasn't so overtly homophobic. It was
polite and soft in the language, but that was basically the line. It basically was the
Chinese Communist Party's line. That this is one of the many deviations of human behavior
that will disappear with socialism. I essentially got marginalized by this MLM-T3 study
group complex. They didn't kick me out because I had some friends who respected me and who
would have refused to allow that. But I saw that I was an uncomfortable minority. It made
me think back to when I was a twelve year old boy in segregation Florida and there was
nobody else there. So I started questioning. These people may have turned on the lights in
the tunnel, but they sure do put blinders on. There's something wrong with this
Stalinist-Maoist version of Marxism. And also, I wanted to be queer. A queer communist. A
queer Marxist.
M: So through that study group you became Marxist.
Walt: Yes.
M: But you realized, "I am Marxist, but not this Marxism."
Walt: Yeah. So I started looking around and I found this little ad in a national gay paper
that was about two lines at the bottom that said "Gay Liberation through socialist
revolution!" I said, "What! Did I read that right? They sound like my kind of people!" So
I wrote them from DC. They had just gotten founded about this time, '74 or early '75. In
between my two years of nursing school, which is what I was doing my last few years in DC,
I drove out here to LA to meet them to see what they were like. So I met them and was
reasonably impressed, although they were awfully small. There were three to five of them
total. I had discussions, and then I went back to DC and I started a little DC gay
socialist study group that was using a kind of edited version of that same curriculum of
this other study group complex, a little of the Mao and adding in a little Trotsky.
Basically it was an introduction to Marxism. I wanted to recruit some other queers to
Marxism so that I wouldn't be the only one. I also tried horizontal recruitment, as they
called it - from the straight ones. So that went OK. One person ended up later moving with
me to LA to join the L&RU and a couple others remained sympathizers. But I stayed in touch
by correspondence with the people out here, the L&RU, and invited them to come to DC. We
did a forum for this left milieu called ‘Gay liberation through socialist revolution'.
Later through struggle with the Spartacist League we dropped that slogan, but at the time
it was cutting edge; it was the main slogan of the L&RU and of course it drove most people
in the liberal and sectoralist queer community crazy - "What are you talking about
socialist revolution, we just want equal rights". But we got 125 people to come out to
that in DC, including some of the Maoists who spoke up and gave their line, but.... Since
I got my nursing degree I came out here to join them.
M: So how did those three or five people in L.A come together?
Walt: I don't know exactly because I wasn't here and I don't remember the stories. I know
they were all in the Maoist milieu and so they all had similar kind of rejection
experiences to me. Because the Maoist milieu dominated the new left decomposition products
of that time, and if you were a radical revolutionary anti-capitalist, that was the main
game in town, with the Trotskyists having a little left field pocket, and then the
anarchists - I don't know about LA, but they weren't a factor in DC. So then in '76 when I
came to LA to join we expanded to 11. So we had brought in more people, including people
that were less politically experienced. But there were some core politics, like we
believed in a working class orientation, including implantation of cadre in industry and
work in trade unions.
M: Can you explain what the implantation of cadre in industry means?
Walt: It's that you want to recruit people from the working class, but you also wanted to
send people who became won to communism into industry or into strategic places where they
could help organize other workers or recruit from working class struggles and to work in
the trade union movement. So out of our 11 we had two in communications, who were
telephone workers and in the communication workers union, and me in health care, joining
the health care workers union. We actually talked about that within the L&RU - you notice
we weren't just talking queer politics, we were also trying to do our bit to help build a
revolutionary working class movement. That's a part of the problem that we began to see
here pretty soon. First of all, 11 is awful small, being out queer. And so being a gay
liberation communist organization was not particularly helpful in organizing a
revolutionary caucus within the communication workers union, or the nurses.
M: Did the organization actually send people into these workplaces to organize? You said
that was a strategy.
Walt: Yeah. At least one of the communication workers was sent in. The other may have been
their to start with, but he was there in part with the idea of being an organizer within.
And before we later moved on into the Spartacist League, we were training a couple or
three other people for jobs for implantation. Apprenticeships, and skilled trades for
example, and electrician, transport workers. We were aiming for somebody in the ports.
Didn't get that far, though.
M: So the goal then in doing this workplace organizing, would not be to, say, organize a
queer caucus in the health care workers union.
Walt: No. It wasn't. Not at that time. And it was also contrary to our politics.
M: Why was that?
Walt: Well, we were saying that the role of queers in the maintenance of American
capitalism is not strategic in the same way that black people - and later other people of
color - and women is. That American capitalism and the domination of the American ruling
class is integrally dependent on maintaining the special oppression of blacks, in
particular, and also increasingly Latinos and other immigrant forces, and women. And that
gay people are probably not going to find, or likely to find, full democratic rights
without the leadership of a radical or revolutionary movement. But it's conceivable that
they could. And I think that in the outcome of the last few years you can kind of see that
it's conceivable that the nominal granting of democratic rights can happen within the
structure of capitalism. So we were saying that we wanted to organize around the things
that were strategic and fundamental while we also fought for women's liberation - and we
sort of saw the queer question as in some ways integrally related to that - and for full
democratic rights for everybody, that we have to make a point of fighting for everybody,
even unpopular or small minorities, whether strategic or not. Though we didn't organize
gay caucuses in our trade union work, we did raise the demand that unions should support
full democratic rights and oppose discrimination against LGBT people. That way, we
established a track record of the importance of the unions and the working class fighting
to defend gay people when under attack, as with all marginalized groups. So we were in a
position to quickly mobilize support when pogrom-type attacks came, as later happened
during the hysteria around AIDS.
M: Earlier you were talking about whether it was possible to realize full democratic
rights under capitalism. I think you were saying that at least for the United States -
Walt: It's theoretically possible to do that.
M: But it's not possible to do that for, say, black people, because capitalism, in the US,
is formulated on the foundation of racism. But you said that for queer people, it's more
of an... open question?
Walt: Yeah. I would say, once again I personally don't see it fully, but it's possible to
extend democratic rights more and more and more on things like marriage, on things like
serving in the military. They could also do, although they haven't yet, on
nondiscrimination in the workplace, or nondiscrimination in housing. All these are aspects
of full democratic rights. They can grant that without threatening hegemony, rule, power,
including power to exploit the working class as a whole.
M: In some of Lavender and Red's writing about their goals or demands for sexuality and
for queer struggle, they talked about a vision of being able to actually move beyond
gender distinctions entirely, and not have - obviously - straight, gay, bisexual; not have
masculine/feminine gender roles, not being assigned male and female. Is that something
beyond democratic rights, are those things that you think can be achieved under capitalism?
Walt: No, that's beyond democratic rights. I think that's part of what ultimately needs
the socialist revolution. But I think that's integrally related to, and you can
contextualize it within, the "woman question", in the traditional Marxist terminology. In
terms of the elimination of patriarchy. I think retrospectively we could have gone beyond
this to expand the potential contribution of queerness. But it's still a terrain that was
opened up. I mean we want to be able to, for example, socialize reproduction of labor to
create freedom from those traditional sex roles, including forms of sexual partnering. So
I would say that's tied to to the original liberatory vision of Marxism. And we were
certainly into extrapolating on that, and talking about that, and envisioning and
imagining, but on the other hand we're not utopians. We're saying you don't get these
things just by imagining them, you get them by working to change the material bases and
the structure of capitalism and class rule.
M: You saw that struggle for liberated gender and sexuality as being part of what you
called the "women question", and also that's clearly part of the gay liberation struggle.
So how did you separate out the gay question from women's liberation struggles and
patriarchy, and separate it as something that was not strategic?
Walt: Well, by saying not strategic doesn't mean it's unimportant. But because you were
asking me initially around caucuses and about how you would organize caucuses. And it gets
back also to sectoralism. To the extent that we sort of made a hard line about this, it
was because we were fighting against sectoralism, which we felt is really going to weaken
and divert the movement, or building a powerful unified working class movement that can
ultimately smash capitalism, and the solidarity necessary to do it. With sectoralism, the
tendency is that it ends up focusing more and more on the particular gains and demands and
organizing increasingly narrowly around those, and often then it leads to, as we can see
time and time again, to bending away from a revolutionary purpose by making alliances and
concessions with capitalist forces, particularly liberals, saying "Oh, you support us on
this so we won't challenge your basic power." At it's worst sectoralism can lead to
support for fascism. For a very authoritarian form of capitalist state as long as you got
your crumbs, or your particular narrow interests were protected. So we were very motivated
by fighting against sectoralism. We were talking in terms of how you organize the fight,
and particularly when there's a justification for separate forms of organization. And that
wouldn't necessarily be hard and fast for all time. For us, for a caucus in the health
care workers union, or the communication workers union, it was much more important to have
a revolutionary or a class struggle trade unionist perspective that we were uniting all
people around, as opposed to prioritizing a gay caucus, or a series of caucuses that might
be parallel, like a gay caucus, and a women's caucus, and a Latino caucus, and a this and
that caucus. At another time or with a more "advanced" nature of the struggle, you might
have some of these different caucuses, all of which were revolutionary and class struggle,
and were united at the same time.
M: But going into an industry, the first thing you do would not be going to find the other
queer people there.
Walt: Yeah. Right. So, since we're on the labor thing, I had gotten involved in the trade
union struggle activism at Kaiser here in LA as a nurse. I had been involved in the new RN
union, including pushing the contract negotiations in the most militant direction I could,
including some democratic rights demands, including for queer people, and for the right
for Filipinos to speak their language - they had a rule that you couldn't speak
non-English in the hospital even in off-duty areas. And then a strike was coming up from
the "non-professional" workers - the vocational nurses, and the nurse's aides, and the
housekeepers, and the dietitians. And so the question was, what are the RNs going to do?,
because we were in a different union than the majority of the workers. The perspective of
the union leaders was, "We will keep working. But we will work to rule. We won't do other
workers' jobs. But we will cross picket lines and come into work to take care of patients
because that's our highest duty and blah blah blah." I argued as a class struggle trade
unionist, no, picket line means don't cross, working class solidarity is an important
principle that we must - in the case of the US - reestablish as inviolate, and furthermore
practically for all of you worrying about the patients, if we have a solid strike Kaiser
will be much more likely to settle then if we do this piecemeal work-to-rule shit. I was
putting this forward as the queer, and also the commie. I put forward a position that no,
we need to commit, we need to take a vote to not cross the picket line. I won that
argument, and Kaiser settled the strike the next day, without even actually having gone
out on strike. That was an example - a small one - of the kind of trade union work and
class struggle intervention into a workplace that we tried to do.
M: Is that part of the reason why you thought it was a necessity to go beyond just being a
small gay socialist organization, so you could include people like your coworkers? Because
you saw it as necessary to organize there, in the hospital, as working class people, and
that being working class people was the primary point of unity in the workplace?
Walt: I think so. Plus we needed size and you've got to open it up and have it on a
different basis if you're going to recruit size. We weren't exactly making headway
recruiting out of the gay political organizations.
M: Why? Why do you think that was?
Walt: ‘Cause we were commies. I mean 'cause people were saying, "You're unpopular. I'm a
pro-capitalist queer. I want to succeed. I just want the right to make it in this society
free from discrimination." Or they'd say "Oh, my main problem is not as a worker, my
struggle is against patriarchy and male bosses." We were increasingly seeing we were gonna
be stuck in a niche that is not exactly a springboard to being part of a movement for
power, as long as we were just isolated as a small queer communist organization. That's
just setting aside the question whether we were effective or not in our organizing. But
just by definition we were narrowing ourself to this little piece, whereas our basic idea
- the more we thought about it, and the more we studied broader history and movements -
was that we needed to build a party. That was our belief as people being won to Leninism.
That we needed to build a vanguard or a disciplined democratic centralist party. So we
needed to find somebody else to hook up with.
M: Did you focus on trying to win the gay community over to socialist politics?
Walt: We tried. But first of all this history is pretty short. We're talking here just a
matter of three, four years maximum before we abandoned that narrow existence. We went to
gay pride. We leafleted. We put out a newspaper. We intersected issues in the gay
community like the Gay and Lesbian Center strike. We were active in a campaign to boycott
some big bar in West Hollywood because of it's anti-black discriminatory behaviors, just
like in Washington. And we would try to organize queer contingents in anti-war and Chilean
solidarity demos or actions. We did those kinds of things that would be trying to attract
attention. Although then increasingly we focused more on study to try to figure out where
to go next. So we took a lot of time reading.
M: What were some of the challenges that Lavender and Red brought to the LA gay movement?
Walt: We basically criticized saying capitalism is the problem, not the solution.
Capitalism cannot be reformed. We're not the only ones in a shaky boat here. That it's all
of us or none. There's other oppressed groups and if we don't express and fight for
solidarity with your working class fellow gays and lesbians, who are also maybe Latina,
and maybe also black, then that even more bluntly poses, well, are you going to have
freedom as a black sissy queer without also challenging racism? Without also challenging
sex roles and patriarchy? So you put that out there continuously.
M: So pointing out that actually, despite who the leadership of these liberal gay
organizations might be, the vast majority of the queer community was in fact the working
class, was in fact not white. And so by being so narrowly focused, they were leaving most
people behind.
Walt: Yeah. Without fighting the other sources of the oppression of our community.
M: What were some of the challenges that you brought to left organizations around Los Angeles?
Walt: Why are you all so backward? Defending the worst in bourgeois society or Stalinism?
M: Did you have conflicts?
Walt: Well, we had arguments. We would often be shown the door. We would go to meetings
that were run by these Maoist organizations or popular front coalitions and speak up,
including queer demands or just speaking as out queer communists, and sometimes we'd get
thrown out, shown the door by the security squads. You know, they said "You're being
provocateurs", or sometimes we'd be police-baited, or disunity-baited, or, in a couple
cases, "Get out of here faggots - will the security show them the door". Twice, that I
went to.
M: Despite the rejection that Lavender and Red got from the established Maoist left, you
still remained very committed to the idea that what queer people needed was socialist
revolution.
Walt: Yeah. We thought these weren't really socialists. They were corrupter socialists,
this tradition. Also things were beginning to change. I mean, we were having some impact -
not just us, other people. I mean these people were getting a bit embarrassed because they
were trying to recruit people too, from a broader perspective, like ex-liberals or still
liberals, and they were getting uncomfortable with this. We were also suspicious, though,
because then people began to switch, including some of the Trotskyist groups, like not
only the SWP[Socialist Workers Party], but Workers' World. We would point out the
hypocrisy of these groups that a few years ago wouldn't talk about queer people, and now
they didn't come out with some analysis admitting how come they were wrong and why they
changed, they just suddenly started being friendly and welcoming and adding a few token
gay demands to their kitchen sink demand list. We were telling other gay people, don't be
fooled by this kind of pandering. Ask for their analysis. Where's their strategy. Where's
their program. And, most fundamentally, do they have a program for overthrowing capitalism.
M: Seeing the class contradiction, seeing the struggle between the working class and the
capitalist class as being the crucial linchpin, is that perspective what made Lavender and
Red realize it was necessary to not just organize gay people, not just organize working
class gay people, but also to be together with anti-racist and feminist, and
anti-imperialist struggles?
Walt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
M: You talked about how your perspective on feminism was that it needed to be working
class feminism. And you came into some debates about that with feminist groups during the
strike at the Gay Community Services Center, which was one of the first established gay
social service organizations, and which ended up getting a lot of funding....
Walt: This was actually before I moved out from DC, so I just know this second hand. But
the workers attempted to organize a union because there were wholesale and arbitrary
firings. And we supported those workers, and to some extent we might have implanted the
idea that you need a union, you need to organize and negotiate as workers with the
management for wages, working conditions, and against arbitrary firings.
M: One account I was reading basically said that the Lavender and Red Union were the
people who came to the workers and said, "You should go on strike", and that idea won out,
but there is one quote from one of the workers who was speaking against Lavender and Red's
proposal, saying "This is not a labor issue. Our fight is about lesbian feminism versus
male dominated hierarchy." It seems Lavender and Red's position was that actually workers
being fired for organizing against their boss is probably a labor issue.
Walt: Yes! I think so. That's not to deny, and we didn't at the time, that it's not also a
feminist issue.
M: So how did that play out in that strike?
Walt: As I recall the workers lost, but our position got a substantial amount of respect.
But there was some lingering disagreement, sort of like markers were cast down: OK, this
is how they see it, this is how we see it. But it did raise the issue - for some people
for the first time - that even in the nonprofit, NGO, social services sector, there are
labor issues. That because we're a queer organization does not suddenly resolve capitalism
or resolve the tendency of bosses and managers to exploit, and abuse, and mistreat
workers. That workers have a right to organize. And I think we had some modest success in
at least instilling these basic principles which we were fighting for.
M: How did Lavender and Red see this NGO-ization of the early gay movement affecting
things and what was your position on it?
Walt: It hadn't really happened yet enough for us to take it up as that issue
specifically, except in specific concrete cases like this one. We saw that strike as an
example of that, that a voluntary organization becomes an institution. We didn't foresee
that it was going to become a tidal wave, or the degree to which it became the dominant mode.
M: Lavender and Red's existence is very interesting because it was very contradictory in
the sense that this group formed that saw there was no place for queer struggle in the
revolutionary left, and then at same had a political understanding that there wass no
place for queer struggle by itself. And so I guess Lavender and Red probably saw its own
existence as something of a failure.
Walt: Well, yeah, it certainly was contradictory from the start. That contradiction was
embedded in it. But I would say that's not necessarily a failure, to have then gone
through and transformed ourselves, and whoever else we influenced, with a vision that was
not only transformative but transitional to a different perspective. And we probably
played a small role in helping to transform at least a corner of the left. I would say
that we also, we and other people who came along after us or in parallel, did have
struggles within the left to clarify, or rectify, or challenge leftover or former
positions. And a lot of these contradictions still.... Well, I started to say still exist
but....
M: But for the contradictions to exist in the left, the left would need to still exist.
Walt: Yeah, that's why I sort of backed off. No, the thing that I'm saying that still
exists, because I saw it again in Act Up twenty years later, was the fight against - in
less explicitly political terms most of the time - a sectoralist, single-issue approach
versus any solidarity, integrated struggle, and anti-capitalist perspective. And that has
existed in different movements in the queer community as well.
M: So this approach against having a focus on just this one oppressed sector, and instead
organizing in the united working class struggle with other oppressed groups - that's a
perspective saying that revolutionary political organizations shouldn't be based only in
one oppressed group. But is it a perspective saying that social movement groups shouldn't
be only based in one community as well?
Walt: I personally wouldn't say that. I would say that there are rules for mass movements
that are based in one sector, but there's always going to be the danger of that bending
towards class collaborationism and accommodation with capitalism unless there's some
countervailing active tendency. So I think, like your Chilean comrade was saying in that
meeting a couple weeks ago, there are being different sectors of the popular movement, but
then you need to have a party, a political organization, a formation, a structure, by
which the unity of the struggles and the cross-fertilization and the critique and
challenging takes place within the popular movement sectors. So I would say that I can
certainly see - first of all, it's going to happen whether I or any other revolutionary
approves of it - but I can see that it's not necessarily something to always to be fought
and polemicized against, but to maybe be intervened within with a unified revolutionary
perspective, and to have some way to link these together. And at times then it may outlive
its usefulness. You could actually see if it's objectively becoming more of an obstacle in
it's sectoral boundaries than it is a benefit in its mass mobilization potential.
M: Tell me a little bit about the transformation of the Lavender and Red Union. You said
that after this period of intense activity, there was then a period of intense political
study, saying "OK we've been doing this work in the left, in the gay community, where are
we going?"
Walt: Right. Part of it was since we were coming out of a Maoist milieu, even though we
weren't splitting from any explicit organizational connection, we felt like we needed to
decide between the original Bolshevik vision of global international revolution, or as
Trotsky concretizes, permanent revolution, versus the Stalinist/Maoist conception of
socialism in one country, that, among other things led to accommodations with the...
M: National bourgeoisie.
Walt: National and international bourgeoisie. I mean, this was also Nixon in China time,
you know. That shook up a whole lot of people in the Maoist left milieu - "What the fuck
is he doing? The butcher of Vietnam being welcomed to Beijing!" That was the first big
study. And so we came up with a document rejecting socialism in one country. So then we
decided, OK we're basically committed to the Trotskyist tradition, so, which one?
M: It may seem interesting to someone that a gay communist organization would spend so
much time studying the question of socialism in one country instead of spending that time
studying sexuality and gender.
Walt: Well we saw ourselves as a part of - or wanted to be a part of - the global
communist movement for revolution. And you can't just study one piece of that. You've got
to try to find the central dividing lines or questions. That's the one that we encountered.
M: And it had a lot of importance in the context that you were in at that time.
Walt: Yeah, right now it might seem arcane and esoteric, but I think in the context why we
did that instead of sexuality is not so hard to understand, because we were gay
communists. Or gay revolutionaries. So he needed to study and sort ourselves out according
to the key revolutionary questions that were facing us, as well as then we would expect to
dialogue and counter with any putative partners about how they related to queerness and
sexuality.
M: Basically at that point you're just choosing between Stalinism and Maoism and Trotskyism.
Walt: Yeah. This was a two stage process. The first was to choose Trotskyism and then to
move to find out what form of Trotskyism. Then that requires a study of the Russian
question. Is the Soviet Union a degenerated workers' state, or is it state capitalist, or
bureaucratic collectivist? Once again a question that seems far removed from queer
liberation, and I tell you people that we talked to about this said "Are you guys crazy?"
Then somebody wrote a little headline on a story about the fusion of the Red Flag Union -
as the Lavender and Red Union was known at that time - with the Spartacist League as "The
fruits merge with the nuts".
M: After the Lavender and Red Union began studying the Russian question, there were a
number of parties that came trying to....
Walt: Trying to pitch their version to us. We talked to the SWP, we talked maybe briefly
to Workers World, although by that time nobody much had much respect for them; they had
already gone over to Kim Il Sung as an exemplar of the revolution. Though maybe that came
a little later. And the International Socialists[IS], and the RSL[Revolutionary Socialist
League], which had been kind of a left split from the IS. We did talk to the Freedom
Socialist Party too. They were the ones that were articulating the vision of socialist
feminism. But it pretty much came down to between the Spartacist League and the
Revolutionary Socialist League. It ended up being a twelve-three split. Twelve of us
joined the Sparatacist League and three joined the RSL. It was partly a question of the
way you came down on the Russia question. But it was also partly a question of style,
temperament, and bent thing. The RSL was a little more loose, not such hard democratic
centralist in their style. Right after the merger we were all in LA, and the Spartacist
League was saying "OK, we're a national and international tendency, so you can't all stay
in LA because we want you to spread out, so where are you going to go?" And some of us
went to Detroit. Partly because the auto industry was hiring again. So there was going to
be an opportunity of implanting a bunch of people in the auto industry after a period of
stagnation and shrinking. As far as I know those three people who went with the RSL stayed
in LA. The SL fraction split - a couple stayed here, some went to Detroit, Boston,
Chicago, New York.
M: So the Lavender and Red Union mostly joined the Spartacist League, and the Spartacist
League allowed you to filter out across the country. So what happened next? What was the
legacy that you saw the Lavender and Red Union having within further organizing and militancy?
Walt: I think that one theme of this discussion is that we felt like we were able to
express our deeper or broader political commitments through our involvement in a more
comprehensive national and international revolutionary organization. To that extent I
think we felt like it was successful for us as individuals and for the continuity of the
political work or the political vision that we had. Later the SL certainly got more
involved in queer struggle, even during the time that I was still there, which I was there
for ten years. Like that case in Chicago. We were explicitly defending and mobilizing and
getting labor union locals to defend a gay pride march in Chicago from a Nazi attack. And
most of the rest of the left eschewed or shied away from that. The most they would do was
say, "Oh, let's have a rally to protest the horror of the idea of the Nazis." And we're
saying "Fuck that namby-pamby liberal-ass shit, let's stop them from coming here."
Lavender and Red Union people had different skills. Some people continued to work in the
communication workers' union, for example, only in a different city. Some people found
skills as internal organizers, apparatus people. I worked in both health care and in these
anti-fascist mobilizations, and in the legal and political defense work. People went
through with apprenticeships and were implanted into industry and industrial fractions. At
that level, I would say that we also were able to bring the particular knowledge and
skills of the queer community where there were opportunities to intersect, like with the
anti-fascist organizing, and later in the AIDS movement, including infusing in the party -
before the Spartacist League got totally isolated - and the other forces it it influenced
in Europe, and Mexico, South Africa, Poland, Russia, with its commitment to queer
liberation, queer rights as a part of a comprehensive communist party. That we brought
that, our tradition and our personal histories into the broader life of this broader
political organization; I think that had an impact.
M: You feel that the Lavender and Red Union was able to spread a bigger change to the rest
of the left.
Walt: Yeah.
M: And so then you left after ten years.
Walt: Largely I burned out and just needed to take a few years off. But I was also
beginning to question the continued relevance of the Spartacist League's fairly narrow
application of Trotskyism and democratic centralism. Because I feel like the farther you
get away from having a history of active involvement in leadership in mass workers'
struggles, the more distorted, precious, esoteric, and just quirky the idea of embodying
this tradition becomes. My own politics now, I would say I define myself as an
anti-capitalist revolutionary, and sometimes I say I'm a communist. I mean readily I'll
say that, it's just not always appropriate. But I'm not affiliated with any particular
political organization or sectarian tradition. I'm still influenced by the Trotskyist
tradition of Marxism more than any other single tradition, but I believe in, and I'm open
to, more eclectic revolutionary anti-capitalist movement building. So there's this
organization COiL[Communities Organizing in Liberation]that I've been an associate member
of, and I'm a member of this Ultra-red political sound art collective that's international
in three countries, and largely involved in trying to build a mass movement of tenants for
housing justice, connected to the other struggles against capitalism that people in LA are
engaged in right now.
M: You were involved in the AIDS movement after you left the Spartacist League.
Walt: I was. And I went back to school, got graduate degrees, and then AIDS kind of
happened. So that's where I worked. I was involved in Act Up, and more broadly in pushing
things within the AIDS movement that came out of that tradition that I've been a part of.
Which is that an injury to one is an injury to all, that struggles against capitalism,
against all forms of oppression, are indivisible. That you've got to solve the AIDS crisis
with people who are also poor, black, trans, living in under-resourced countries, and that
therefore the struggle has to be reflective of, or address, or connected to, struggles
against all forms of oppression. And I've similarly found myself oppositional in many
cases to people who said "No, the emphasis has just got to be on getting resources and
focusing the attention of the system to solve this one crisis."
M: Any concluding wisdom on the lessons of the Lavender and Red Union?
Walt: Talking indirectly to the Turkish comrades, one of the things that we were attracted
to from the Lavender and Red Union in the Spartacist League, is that the Spartacist League
was committed to internationalism in an active way. Not just solidarity. But trying to
found, or bond with, or establish relationships with revolutionary groups in other non-US
countries. And that the US left should subordinate itself to an international
revolutionary collective process, at least in ideal, and move in practical concrete steps.
I still believe that.
http://www.blackrosefed.org/gay-liberation-socialist-revolution/
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» Anarchistic update news all over the world - Part 2 - 4 November 2016