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...march, organized by a number of radical groups, including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Progressive Labor Party (PL), attracted contingents from as far away as Minnesota and Iowa. The bulk of the marchers came from the big cities on the East Coast...
...silly to suggest that I view any criticism of the Panthers as racist. My point is that PL's "criticism" of the Panthers has been un-comradely and factional in tone. It is also disingenuous to portray SDS as "active participants" in a struggle where unarmed Panthers are arbitrarily rounded up, jailed, or killed in cold blood...
Last, it is untrue that I am anti-radical. Where the SDS of 1966 was not radical-that is, in its virtual ignorance of workers as a potential agent of social change-PL's ideological influence on that organization was constructive, as I said in my article. What I object to in PL is an obsession with its own organizational "purity" which results in non-cooperation with liberals and callous attacks on radicals...
However, this is not to say that in struggling around what they believe to be a correct analysis of issues PL members and friends have always been free from some "mechanical" or "sectarian" errors, but perhaps Landau could point out a political group that has. What is important is that a group undertake a continual self-critical appraisal of its actions: which PL does...
This is what constitutes the true danger of Landau's piece. Take the mistakes and failings of some PL members and supporters and present them in a distorted, incomplete format that plays heavily on an anti-Communist stereo type that is as much a part of us all as racism or male chauvinism, and what you've got is a red baiting smear of an organization that has consistently fought militantly in support of just struggles, even those of groups with which it deeply disagreed (e.g. Chavez Lettuce Boycott, NAC's campaign of last spring against the CFIA...