Letter in Support of the Movement in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Notes on Strategy & Tactics

I have not read this yet, but it looks interesting...

Eric Mann's "Letter in Support of the Movement in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Strategy & Tactics"
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:03:21 -0700


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Dear Friends,



I've linked here the PDF version of my just-finished 50 page Letter in Support of the Movement in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Notes on Strategy & Tactics. You can also visit www.frontlinespress.com to download the PDF, or contact us to receive hardcopies. I have been working on the Letter for 21 days non-stop, aided by many conversations with Gulf Coast activists and organizers, and other Black organizers throughout the U.S. I have been trying to read, devour the tons of articles on the racist, human-made attack on the Black community, code name Katrina, to inform this work.



For those of you who have read my Dispatches from Durban, Letter to the Movement on the War in Iraq, and The 2004 Elections: A Challenge to the U.S. Left, you know I try to focus my writing on the re-building of a multiracial Left led by the interests of the Black, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Indigenous peoples, in alliance with the nations and peoples of the Third World. The objective is to help build an antiracist, anti-imperialist united front, and to try to address issues of strategy and tactics from that perspective.



We live at a time when Right-wing racists are so emboldened that Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of freedom-fighter Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and former Education Secretary William Bennett, the architect of the war on drugs that has contributed to 1 million Black people being in prison today, stated, If you wanted to reduce crime you could abort every Black baby in the country. The defense of the New Orleans movement offers a hopeful opportunity for a major assault on the forces of reactionwhat this Letter calls a Third Reconstruction. Today, the embattled Black people are under unbearable assault, and are in great need of friends and allies willing to go to the mat to fight against white supremacy and imperialism.



This Letter in Support of the Movement in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is rooted in that tradition. I hope people find it worth their time to read, to debate, to generate other strategy papers such as Saladin Muhammads important Hurricane Katrina: The Black Nations 9/11! As this goes to press there is a critical meeting of Gulf Coast organizers in South Carolina working to further refine and develop their strategy and tactics, and we can expect important statements coming from Community Labor United and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Reconstruction Project in future days. This Letter is an effort to gain more national and international support for their efforts.



In solidarity and struggle,



Eric Mann

September 30, 2005

I would appreciate comments and feedback at info@frontlinespress.com.