'We Need to Take 'Em Down' - ANSWER/PSL: Stop the War at Home and Abroad!

On Saturday afternoon, October 24th, I attended the Long Beach Public Forum on Afghanistan, "STOP THE WAR AT HOME AND ABROAD," sponsored by L.A.'s Party for Socialism and Liberation. The party's website is here. The event took place at one of the coolest coffeehouse's ever, the Library Coffeehouse, at Broadway and Redondo, in downtown Long Beach.

Here's the sidewalk scene as I arrived. Inside, the walls are lined with old bookshelves, and customers were working with laptops at tables and lounging in comfortable chairs. Definitely a happening local hangout:

Apparently, activists already toured the neighborhood to plaster party stickers on the local communications hardware. I actually forgot my cellphone. I used this payphone - the first time I've used one in years - to call home and check in on my family before the event started:

Back out front, one of the event organizers, Douglas Kauffman, was handing out flyers for the event. That's him pictured below. He was standing with another young fellow, Comrade Javiar, who refused to have his picture taken. Even Kaufman was hesitant, but I'd introduced myself and given him my business card, so he said okay:

I ordered a latte and hung out for a couple of minutes. The group met in a small side room at the coffeehouse. The setting was intimate. I didn't take any more pictures until after the event. I snapped this just as things were concluding. Here's the table organizers set up with flyers and copies of Liberation, the PSL news organ.

At the upper left is Richard Becker's Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire. I'm about halfway through the volume, and I'll most likely will be writing a review and analysis when I'm done (big problems in that book, but more on that later). I picked up a copy of Liberation, on the left, with the cover story about the Wall Street bailout. Inside, the November 6th edition features a piece on the war, "Occupation Intensifies, Afghan Resistance Grows Stronger":

As the civlian death toll rises and reports come back of troops dying in a war that cannot be won, public opinion in the United States is starting to turn. What is needed is for the people to once again take to the streets to demand an end to the occupation. Once free from foreign occupation, the people of Afghanistan will be able to determine their destiny.

Notice also the upcoming event flyers at right. The PSL has made a big deal previously about its upcoming socialism conference. But notice the new Students Fight Back flyer at top right. Students Fight Back is ANSWER's campus front group. I discussed the organization yesterday. See, "'Mobilizing Conference' for Public Schools Revives '60s-Era Campus Radicalism." Organizers have an event planned for November 17th at the CSU Chancellor's office in downtown Long Beach, along the waterway. The flyer's small print reads, "The CSU Trustees don't care about students, faculty or campus workers. They have pushed the state budget crisis onto our backs." The flyer also calls for "mass demonstrations," clearly in line with what I reported yesterday: Activists statewide have situated the campus mobilizations within the dialectical language of international solidarity and revolutionary struggle.

Douglas Kauffman spoke first during the presentations. He's a key organizer for the CSU protest on November 17th. It turns out that the big line coming from ANSWER and Students Fight Back is that the wars abroad have cut into education budgets at home (no mention of the fact that state revenues pay for the bulk of public school programs in California). Kauffman in particular spoke of how the "war economy" had created an "economic draft," analogous the federal government's Vietnam-era draft. "Capitalism has made it that poor and minorities are targeted first," argued Kauffman. "Those impressed into military service face worse economic circumstances after they return home from war." Kauffman spoke for some time, mouthing boilerplate communist talking points, and concluding with, "We will fight to destroy the imperial war machine - troops out of Afghanistan now!"

Next up was "Comrade Javiar." I got a kick out of the emcee's introduction, since this was my first actual party meeting where cadres referred to each other as "comrade." It's almost a blast from out of time: All that was missing were the berets and bandoliers. That said, Comrade Javiar was sporting a "Viva La Palestine" t-shirt, which featured images of radical militants above the slogan, "Which side are you on?"

Comrade Javiar denounced alleged American imperialism in Afghanistan. Sounding as though he'd read some key Leninist tracts, he exclaimed, "Imperialism is a system that exists for war." Comrade Javiar continued, saying that America's colonial occupation was doomed. Resistance movements had achieved independence in countries like China, Korea, Vietnam, and Mozambique. "Imperialism can be defeated," he claimed. Comrade Javiar then reminded the audience that "ANSWER was the only group that mobilized against the invasion of Aghanistan in 2001." He was quite proud of this, and was convinced that resistance and struggle would ultimately defeat the American regime.

Interestingly, when the emcee opened up the floor for questions, one woman who was sitting to the back of the room with her daughter spoke up and denounced the Obama administration. She said that President Obama is a "puppet" controlled by the powerful corporate interests who run the country. "We need to take em' out," she said, speaking of the government in Washington, and referring to hopes for the proletarian victory over the ruling class. Here's the picture of the woman. I waited until folks were moving outside to try to get a couple of more photographs:

Comrade Javiar was in wild agreement with the "We need to take 'em down" comments, although seeming a bit paranoid, he couched his direct calls for toppling the Obama regime in the vague language of "change." Ironic that Obama himself has branded himself as the agent of change. Comrade Javiar should just come out and say his wants to decapitate the "criminal" Obama administration. He had already denounced the current administration for backtracking on pledges to withraw the troops, and Comrade Javiar made the point that in fact Obama had "escalated" the "occupation."

Comrade Javiar was accompanied by a former student of mine from Long Beach City College. I said hello to Shondriane Wise after the event was over. She as pleased to see me and happy I'd recognized her, but she also refused to be photographed. She said she hadn't yet joined the Party for Socialism and Liberation, but she did end up leaving with Comrade Javiar; so it's most likely that she's long been indoctrinated to Marxist-Leninist basics by now. I snapped this shot of the couple as they were leaving. Comrade Javiar turned back to look just in time:

Is it just me, but isn't there something fundamentally inauthentic for our revolutionary to be hopping into a late-model Volkswagon convertible?

No ascetism for today's revolutinary communist party cadres, I guess?