I really liked your post.

The days when a coalition was a coalition.

You are wrong about the October 27th demo. ANSWER, to its credit, has adopted the October 27th call made by UFPJ and — wonder of wonders — is acting as a left wing in the coalition and fighting reasonably intelligently to maintain the fledling unity. It is as if Brian Becker or whoever took a Fred Halstead pill.

From a regional conference call reported on in the coalition’s logistic meeting last Saturday, there are now nine cities planning united demos on October 27th, up from 6 reported originally. To me, that speaks to the attraction of the basic idea.

Seattle is one of the selected regional centers. It is apparent that there will be real input from Oregon and Idaho and numerous closer cities in Washington State.

This is a bit of a break for the antiwar movement, so Marxmailers who favor mass actions ought to take note and get themselves to a coalition meeting to pitch in. As you know, I have flailed WWP and PSL at least as hard as you over the last few years, but the change in their approach this time is unmistakeable and I am taking it at face value.

I’m currently struggling to understand the concept of “hegemony”. If it means anything in a socialist project, it seems to imply speaking and acting in a way that communicates with disparate groups within a dispersed and fractured working class — which further includes supporting specific causes in the legislative arena.

Your recent sympathetic treatment of Sicko as affective propaganda (for raising issues in a non-sectarian way the general public could understand) seems to contradict the spirit of the present post, which cautions against following the concensus anti-war position of lobbying congress. Of course the anti-war movement is mainly middle class, and Congress is the middle class way.

But I think this line is really unnecessary:

Apparently he much prefers the life-style of a corporate lobbyist and has the girth to show for it.

Seriously? That’s one out of date insult. Now working-class people are much more likely to be fat than the capitalist class (or their lackeys). Cracks about people’s weight play right into discourse on obesity, which is mainly aimed at demonising poor people for their fat, and selling stuff.