Today's topic is Trotskyist ephemera--nothing substantial here.
My interest in geography inspires me to copy the list here:
Brunswick, ME; Buffalo, NY; Central New Jersey; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Kansas City, MO; Lexington, KY; Louisville, KY; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; New York City, NY; Oregon; Norfolk, VA; Bay Area, CA; North Bay Area, CA
Brunswick and Lexington are unambiguously college towns. Central NJ might mean Rutgers or Princeton. Buffalo and Minneapolis have lots of campuses. So one concludes that SA is still oriented towards campus.
Is that good news or bad news? If they're attracting students, then it is unambiguously good news--it means the organization is getting younger. But somehow I doubt that. I suspect their membership is mostly among the faculty and staff. Or less optimistically, among the retired faculty and staff. That their leader--Jeff Mackler, a retired teachers' union hack who will turn 80 this year--likely represents the demographic.
Norfolk is weird--I've never seen a Trotskyist branch there. It's mostly a military town, but there are colleges in the area. The other places, e.g., Chicago, Detroit, and New York, are places where any grouplet will want to have a branch.
More generally, membership skews heavily toward the Northeast and Midwest, with the Bay Area, Oregon, and Norfolk being outliers. Most locations are wealthy cities. The Deep South and Texas are not represented. Neither is Los Angeles--a much more proletarian city than San Francisco.
There are some changes in the Socialist Action webpage/newspaper. Distressingly, there is no link to archives--or at least none I could find. You can still search for old articles, but for that you need a specific title. There is no way to look up what was in the paper in, say, May, 2019, or for any time prior to January 30th, 2020. Perhaps this is just a technical oversight to be corrected in a few days. But I fear instead it is an attempt to airbrush Socialist Resurgence out of history. (Recall that SR split from SA in October, 2019, taking about half the membership with them.) This makes it seem like they have something to be ashamed of.
The other novelty is SA is now posting more videos. This sounds like a good idea, and perhaps they'll get the hang of it some day. But right now there are lots of problems.
They've posted a long video entitled Why I Am Running to be President of the USA. It's in interview format with host Kurt Young, who along with Vancouver comrade Yvonne Hanson, asks Mr. Mackler a bunch of very softball, scripted questions.
The good news is that Mr. Mackler has at least changed his shirt. He's wearing a clean and pressed dress shirt with a tie--big improvement there. He's sitting in his Bay Area living room, in front of a fireplace and well-stocked bookshelf. It looks to be a very nice private house--one wonders what money that would fetch on today's market? He confesses to be nearly 80 years old and has likely lived in that house for decades--surely it's paid for by now. The conclusion: Mr. Mackler is probably a millionaire several times over. He's richer than I am!
But that's not the worst of the video. The main flaw is it's an hour and 20 minutes long! Even I, a devout follower of irrelevant grouplets, don't have the stomach for that. I have only sampled it. Then the production quality, while adequate, is not professional. Mr. Mackler--whom I've dubbed Boring Jeff--lives up to the nickname, answering obvious questions in a monotone voice at great length.
Leonid Brezhnev would be proud! Though I gotta say, Mr. Mackler is a lot more articulate than Joe Biden, so there is hope.
Socialist Resurgence (SR) posts a pdf version of Volume 1 Issue 1 of their eponymous quarterly. (Note that the link goes to votesocialistaction.files.wordpress.com. Some divorces are more amicable than others.)
The paper does contain color photographs, some quite dramatic. For some reason there are two multi-column wide pics of Bernie Sanders--even though they're as much against the guy as Mr. Mackler. But photos notwithstanding, the overwhelming impression is a Wall of Text. Three or four columns wide, covering the entire page in small type, is nothing but fine print. It's very uninviting. The front page has exactly one article, continued on page six. Compare that with The Militant, which front page contains five headlines and two photos--it's a much more lively and engaging layout. Of course The Militant has been in business since 1928--and they certainly don't hide their archives.
SR doesn't offer much geographical information, but there is this. Their national office address is a mailbox at a UPS store in--you'd better sit down for this--Stamford, CT! What's going on--are they running a hedge fund on the side? While Stamford itself is not super-wealthy--it's only the 38th richest town in the state, out of 178--it is the largest business and financial center in New York metro second only to Wall Street. The neighboring communities, e.g., Greenwich and New Canaan, are among the wealthiest places in the world.
What a place to headquarter a supposed Vanguard Party! Sheesh!
Apparently SA and SR are engaged in a competition to see who can attract the smallest audience with new videos. Among SR's contributions is a post by Keith Leslie entitled China, from workers state to imperialist power. It's a presentation of his excellent monograph on the same topic. But honestly, Mr. Leslie should stick to his knitting--while he's a superb writer, he sucks as a lecturer. Even Boring Jeff does better.
The video is nearly two hours long. Mr. Leslie looks like a grad student--slovenly dressed and in dire need of a haircut. Grad students (and here I speak from experience) are very low-status individuals, with only a tenuous purchase on the academic ladder (much more tenuous today than in my time). Typically they are people who have nothing better to do with their time, and who are willing to work for what is likely less than minimum wage. When making a video, the last thing you want to do is look like a grad student!
I don't know if Mr. Leslie really is a grad student--I'm just saying he looks like one. SR does have a number of articles bemoaning their plight, so perhaps Mr. Leslie is playing to type. He needs a better stage persona.
My advice to him is stick to writing. He's good at that.
Further Reading:
The good news is that Mr. Mackler has at least changed his shirt. He's wearing a clean and pressed dress shirt with a tie--big improvement there. He's sitting in his Bay Area living room, in front of a fireplace and well-stocked bookshelf. It looks to be a very nice private house--one wonders what money that would fetch on today's market? He confesses to be nearly 80 years old and has likely lived in that house for decades--surely it's paid for by now. The conclusion: Mr. Mackler is probably a millionaire several times over. He's richer than I am!
But that's not the worst of the video. The main flaw is it's an hour and 20 minutes long! Even I, a devout follower of irrelevant grouplets, don't have the stomach for that. I have only sampled it. Then the production quality, while adequate, is not professional. Mr. Mackler--whom I've dubbed Boring Jeff--lives up to the nickname, answering obvious questions in a monotone voice at great length.
Leonid Brezhnev would be proud! Though I gotta say, Mr. Mackler is a lot more articulate than Joe Biden, so there is hope.
Socialist Resurgence (SR) posts a pdf version of Volume 1 Issue 1 of their eponymous quarterly. (Note that the link goes to votesocialistaction.files.wordpress.com. Some divorces are more amicable than others.)
The paper does contain color photographs, some quite dramatic. For some reason there are two multi-column wide pics of Bernie Sanders--even though they're as much against the guy as Mr. Mackler. But photos notwithstanding, the overwhelming impression is a Wall of Text. Three or four columns wide, covering the entire page in small type, is nothing but fine print. It's very uninviting. The front page has exactly one article, continued on page six. Compare that with The Militant, which front page contains five headlines and two photos--it's a much more lively and engaging layout. Of course The Militant has been in business since 1928--and they certainly don't hide their archives.
SR doesn't offer much geographical information, but there is this. Their national office address is a mailbox at a UPS store in--you'd better sit down for this--Stamford, CT! What's going on--are they running a hedge fund on the side? While Stamford itself is not super-wealthy--it's only the 38th richest town in the state, out of 178--it is the largest business and financial center in New York metro second only to Wall Street. The neighboring communities, e.g., Greenwich and New Canaan, are among the wealthiest places in the world.
What a place to headquarter a supposed Vanguard Party! Sheesh!
Apparently SA and SR are engaged in a competition to see who can attract the smallest audience with new videos. Among SR's contributions is a post by Keith Leslie entitled China, from workers state to imperialist power. It's a presentation of his excellent monograph on the same topic. But honestly, Mr. Leslie should stick to his knitting--while he's a superb writer, he sucks as a lecturer. Even Boring Jeff does better.
The video is nearly two hours long. Mr. Leslie looks like a grad student--slovenly dressed and in dire need of a haircut. Grad students (and here I speak from experience) are very low-status individuals, with only a tenuous purchase on the academic ladder (much more tenuous today than in my time). Typically they are people who have nothing better to do with their time, and who are willing to work for what is likely less than minimum wage. When making a video, the last thing you want to do is look like a grad student!
I don't know if Mr. Leslie really is a grad student--I'm just saying he looks like one. SR does have a number of articles bemoaning their plight, so perhaps Mr. Leslie is playing to type. He needs a better stage persona.
My advice to him is stick to writing. He's good at that.
Further Reading:
- Socialist Resurgence Demands Steep Wage Cuts for Healthcare Workers
- Comrade Keith L. Writes About China
- Socialist Action Splits!
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