Atlanta
I'm now in Atlanta, in the middle of the second day of the US Social Forum, and on the first leg of a trip which will also include Marxism 2007 in London and some time in Beirut around the end of July and the beginning of August.
So far things are looking pretty good here at the the Social Forum. A very large portion of the attendees seem to be scruffy-looking college types such as myself, but there are also a number of big delegations from workers' centers in the south and southwest, and although each is accompanied by a cluster of hangers-on that still adds up to a lot of working folks, in addition to Jobs with Justice and a few decent union delegations.
There are some surprising non-appearances, which bizarrely left Solidarity (with 3 or 4 people and a leaflet) competing with Workers' World for Most Visible Socialist Group at the opening march.
The ISO presence is quite pathetic. There seem to be only 6-8 members here, and they are wierdly hesitant about who they are. They have a big Haymarket Books table (with a pile of copies of Blue Grit), they are leafletting for meetings as CERSCThe two CERSC panels have five ISO members out of eight speakers, but only one is vaguely identified as such., and even Ashley Smith (who has been a full-time ISO organizer for I don't know how long) introduces himself as being on the editorial board of the ISR. It almost seems as though the ISO is trying to copy Freedom Road.
Hopefully that will be the last thing I'll have to say on that topic. I went to a fascinating workshop this morning on minority unionism, something I hope I'll have a chance to come back to later.
2 comments:
The ISO might have been subdued out of fear of intense red-baiting by Solidarity which I assume played a big role in organizing the conference (they have more than a few people in Atlanta). You could have just asked Ashley what was up.
Huh?
Solidarity invited Ashley to speak at a workshop on, if I remember correctly, Socialist Strategy and the Working Class today. He didn't seem very "subdued" there, just insipid.
Are you sure you don't mean FRSO? They clearly did play a big role in the conference. But they wouldn't have been in much of a position to red-bait, since their big event was a 4-hour meeting on (again my recollection is fuzzy) "building a revolutionary movement for the 21st century".
I think I know what was going on, and I've known Ashley for too long to expect him to tell me anything sensible.
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