Information War wants to be free
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to serve the struggle to end bourgeois rule
Annual Report for Ben Seattle
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Annual Report for Ben Seattle
– May 8, 2010 –
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I believe it is useful for revolutionary activists to post, each year, a summary of their activity over the past year and plans for the coming year.
Capitalist corporations give a public annual report to stockholders every year. Our "stockholders" are the workers and oppressed of the world who, by their own struggles, inspire us and give us strength. A tradition of annual reports can assist revolutionary activists to better understand the work, activity and priorities of other activists. This can be a small step in the direction of transparency and eventual greater coordination of effort.
-- Contents –
(1) What I’ve done in the past year
(2) My plans for the coming year
(3) Problems that came up and solutions that were developed
(1) What I have done in the past year
This is my 12th annual report. My previous annual report was posted late (in November). Since then I have been active in the RevLeft and Kasama communities.
(a) The Kasama community
In my previous annual report I described the Kasama organization as people who want to create a revolutionary mass organization. Soon after I wrote that it became clear that my assessment was based on (a) superficial appearances and (b) wishful thinking.
I created several threads in the bulletin board part of the Kasama site criticizing the orientation provided by Kasama’s mission statement—which I consider to be social-democratic. I also had further run-in’s with Mike Ely and a few others.
At this point—I have decided to no longer post to the main portion of the Kasama site (ie: the Kasama blog). I would like to post there because the topics are sometimes interesting and so, quite often, are the activists who read the blog. However Mike has repeatedly threatened to permanently expel me from the Kasama community if he decides that any of my posts on the blog are “without content”. Therefore there is no point in my attempting to post. If I did, Mike would eventually simply expel me from the site. No other members of the Kasama community have spoken out to defend my ability to post to the blog. So it is better to preserve my formal right to post there while waiting for a more favorable balance of forces to develop in the Kasama community. More info on this is online on my RevLeft blog.
(b) The RevLeft community
Since November I have posted an average of twice a month to a blog I created at RevLeft.com. (Note: if readers want to look at it--my web site has a prominent link to my blog). I have also made a few dozen posts to various RevLeft forum topics.
The great problem at RevLeft is that, although it has many thousands of active users—most have a relatively low level of political consciousness and experience as activists. So the signal-to-noise ratio is poor. My activity at RevLeft has therefore been focused on attracting the attention of the more serious activists in the RevLeft community. It is unclear if my efforts have made significant progress. If so, this will become clear with time.
(c) Polemic with CVO / SAIC
In the course of my thread on the bulletin board portion of the Kasama site, I entered into further engagement with a member of SAIC and the CVO [1]. This engagement was productive in several ways—including inspiring me to create a new graphic explaining, in very simple terms to activists who are new to all this, the nature of the “crisis of theory” that has paralyzed the revolutionary movement.
(d) Motion towards a Revolutionary News Service
The most popular thread I created on RevLeft concerned the need to develop a Revolutionary News Service with an audience of millions. It was likely the part about “an audience of millions” that attracted the attention.
The thread got a fair amount of response—and I created a number of graphics in an effort to illustrate some of the principles that would need to guide the service. At this time I have not yet been effective in communicating the nature of the effort that I believe will be the central project destined to unite all the warring factions of the left.
Part of the issue, it appears, is that while this topic has drawn some interest—a number of those interested do not regularly follow news and analysis—and so have little idea of what a real news site actually does or how it is used by readers.
Recently a participant on the thread did some work to create a chart of leftist news sites and some of the charateristics of each site. This is good. It shows that at least some followers of this topic have the interest and motivation to take up work to help make it happen.
(2) What I plan to accomplish
in the coming year
in the coming year
My immediate plans are to take a break from political activity. This may be a few weeks or, more likely, a few months.
My main focus, when I resume political work, will likely be to better communicate what I consider to be the essential features of a revolutionary news service with a mass audience.
(3) Problems that came up and
solutions that were developed
solutions that were developed
As I note above—my efforts to describe the nature of the Revolutionary News Service that I believe we need—have not, so far, been effective. I will need to give thought to this so that my work over the coming year can be effective.
Notes
More about all these topics can be found on my blog at RevLeft. My web site at http://struggle.net/ben/ has a big link to my blog.
[1] Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC)
http://www.SeattleAIC.org
Communist Voice Organization (CVO)
http://CommunistVoice.org
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