Bradley you are right in stating that other forces played a leading role in the movements that MLK and Ghandi are often credited for. Militant Black nationalists, socialists, and the world anti-imperialist movement were all critical in the gains made against Jim Crow segregation. For the US government, MLK moved from being the “respectable� Negro leader to being a problem that needed to be neutralized when he began speaking out against US involvement in the Vietnam War and began to get involved in union struggles, thus beginning to unite powerful forces and ideas.

In the case of India formal independence was granted, but a tight colonial leash was kept in place. Ghandi’s credentials for non-violence and anti-imperialism are destroyed by his support for Britain in the First World War. In fact he traveled the countryside urging peasants to join the British military to go to war. This is in stark contrast to revolutionary socialist leaders of the time such as Eugene Debs, Rosa Luxemburg, V. I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky who were all facing government repression for their effective internationalist opposition to the war.

Kucinich himself does not even oppose the occupation of Iraq. He instead wants to see Iraq occupied by the UN. It is worth remembering that the US war against the Korean people in the 1950s where the US killed around 5 million Koreans, was done under a UN flag. Likewise the starvation blockade against Iraq under the two Bush’s and Clinton that killed up to 2 million Iraqis was done under the auspices of the UN. In contrast to Bush’s supposed unilateral occupation and Kucinich’s support for a multilateralist “solution� (individual rape versus gang rape), socialists say US out of Iraq! UN stay out!

The Zapatistas have not met their objectives because they have refused to make their struggle one for power. Instead, they destroyed the 1994 momentum for revolution by getting bogged down in useless negotiations. Since then they have managed to sabotage their remaining revolutionary momentum by supporting the PRD (a capitalist party that came out of the long ruling PRI) and by failing to use their guns to protect the communities that have identified themselves as Zapatista from the government and its death squads.

To the ruling class damage to property is violence. Yet they regularly carry out the most horrible violence.

From a strategic standpoint breaking a window rarely has any positive impact. For the ruling class such damage costs them very little and certainly doesn’t scare them. For people in the public sitting on the fence on the issue such an act is likely to push and scare away people we need to convince. Likewise, breaking windows is seen in the eyes of large sections of the public as all the excuse that is needed for the police to bust heads. To keep our movements as safe and as legal as possible I suggest people refrain from such activity. Instead of doing small scale damage to property for political demands I advocate the large scale damage to profits that can be done through political strikes by the working class. And instead of playing revolution in the streets on a miniature yet dangerous scale, I advocate politically preparing the public for the real thing.

Liberation News:
groups.yahoo.com/group/Liberation_News/

lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Leonard Peltier For President California
groups.yahoo.com/group/Peltier_California/

Leonard Peltier For President
groups.yahoo.com/group/Peltier_for_President/