Leftist organizations in Atlanta

[redjake]

If you know of any anarchist, socialist, or communist organizations based in Atlanta, Georgia, please let me know. I am planning on moving there right after I graduate high school, and i would like to jump straight into activism. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Q]

What kind of organisation are you looking for, or would anything socialist or anarchist do?

[redjake]

anything socialist or anarchist will do.

[cenv]

Last I heard, NEFAC (http://nefac.net/drupal6/index.php) had an Atlanta collective.

I think the American Party of Labor (http://americanpartyoflabor.org/) has some members there too.

If you aren't into NEFAC or APL, you could always try sending some of the larger US organizations (ICC, IWW, PSL, CWI, etc.) emails to see if they have anyone in Atlanta.

[redjake]

Thanks for all your help.

[Atlanta]

well I think mostly everyone except the Progressive Labor Party, Socialist Party the PSL, and the ISO are in Atlanta

Workers world, Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Communist Party, American Party of Labor and the CPusa all have branches/individual members here, I think Kasama does as well but im not certain of that.

If met IWW members at events and there are liberal and anti war coalitions like Friends committee and ANSWER.

[Sasha]

i remember seeing quite some political flyers around litle five points when i was there

[redasheville]

Last I heard, NEFAC (http://nefac.net/drupal6/index.php) had an Atlanta collective.

I think the American Party of Labor (http://americanpartyoflabor.org/) has some members there too.

If you aren't into NEFAC or APL, you could always try sending some of the larger US organizations (ICC, IWW, PSL, CWI, etc.) emails to see if they have anyone in Atlanta.

ICC are one of the larger US organizations?? Either way, I don't think any of the groups you listed have any people in ATL. Its been a while since I've lived in the South though, so I'm "out of the loop" and could be wrong.

Anyway, the bigger ATL groups are probably the ISO and Solidarity. The ATL branch of Solidarity has historically been one of that organization's biggest, most active and most youthful branches. Good people down there.

The ISO branch is much newer (the ISO was without an ATL branch for several years) but is growing.

I'm a member of the ISO and a former member of Solidarity and I'd recommend getting involved with either one.

Workers World has one or two people, FRSO (the softer version) has some people I believe. Not sure about any others.

[Kassad]

Just to clear up obvious misinformation, the Party for Socialism and Liberation does have members in Atlanta. If you're interested in getting in contact with them, send me a message and I can get you in contact.

[Lenin II]

The American Party of Labor does have an active cell in Atlanta. Let me know if you're interested, and check out the website that was linked - there's a lot of reading on there.

[Q]

The American Party of Labor does have an active cell in Atlanta. Let me know if you're interested, and check out the website that was linked - there's a lot of reading on there.
That you actually say "cell" in a serious way just makes me cringe.

[Lenin II]

That you actually say "cell" in a serious way just makes me cringe.

Troll.

[Kassad]

Troll.

Don't spam please. Consider this a verbal warning.

[redasheville]

Just to clear up obvious misinformation, the Party for Socialism and Liberation does have members in Atlanta. If you're interested in getting in contact with them, send me a message and I can get you in contact.

Well, Atlanta isn't listed on the branches of the PSL website (and they weren't around when I was in the South), so sorry I was misinformed. It wasn't "obvious" to me so you can chill with the snide tone, I meant no disrespect.

[Kassad]

Well, Atlanta isn't listed on the branches of the PSL website (and they weren't around when I was in the South), so sorry I was misinformed. It wasn't "obvious" to me so you can chill with the snide tone, I meant no disrespect.

I was actually referring mostly to Atlanta (the user), not you.

[which doctor]

That you actually say "cell" in a serious way just makes me cringe.
'Cell' is a euphemism meaning a single person.

[Q]

'Cell' is a euphemism meaning a single person.
Nope. "Cell" refers to an underground organisation in which members from one "cell" have no idea who is a member of another "cell". Only party officials know, being the higher up in hierarchy you are, the more you know. Consequently secrecy is of the highest order and blindingly following commands from the top of the chain is considered vital.

If this is how the APL organises then it deserves its fate as an obscure and irrelevant sect on the fringes of the far left.

Edit:
Fun fact: In the seventies the Dutch secret service also organised its own communist party which had exactly this kind of cell structure and got backing from Maoist China. Read all about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Party_of_the_Netherlands).

[Glenn Beck]

Fun fact: In the seventies the Dutch secret service also organised its own communist party which had exactly this kind of cell structure and got backing from Maoist China. Read all about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Party_of_the_Netherlands).

Clearly the APL is a front for the FBI and Red China to sap and impurify Atlanta's precious bodily fluids via Stalinist water fluoridation.

[Ismail]

Ironically enough the Stasi used Maoists within Hoxhaist groups in East Germany to undermine said Hoxhaist groups from the inside. See here: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv5n1/gdrkpd.htm

Maoism seems to go hand-in-hand with sectarianism.

[Lenin II]

Don't spam please. Consider this a verbal warning.

I consider Q's original post far more of a spam post than mine. It served no purpose except obvious sectarian calling. All I did was label it what it was.


'Cell' is a euphemism meaning a single person.

Again, a simple troll post. I should encourage this type of behaviour, personally. It does nothing but expose immature anti-political posts that do not address the politics of the organization in question in any meaningful way.


Nope. "Cell" refers to an underground organisation in which members from one "cell" have no idea who is a member of another "cell".

The APL is organized along democratic-centralist lines as followed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Party of Labor of Albania, as well as most communist parties throughout history in many dozens of countries. As such, members are aware of other members and remain in contact.


Fun fact: In the seventies the Dutch secret service also organised its own communist party which had exactly this kind of cell structure and got backing from Maoist China. Read all about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Party_of_the_Netherlands).

I am not sure what purpose this serves. If you have evidence that the APL is some sort of front organization you are welcome to post it. Otherwise, this has little meaning.

[Q]

Clearly the APL is a front for the FBI and Red China to sap and impurify Atlanta's precious bodily fluids via Stalinist water fluoridation.
Well, who really knows? It's hard to check that with their secretive behaviour, no?

The point in posting that fun fact however was to point out the inherent undemocratic and thusly anti-worker and reactionary, features of cell structures.

Cell structures supposedly have a function in a totalitarian police dictatorship with no political freedoms (which the US clearly is, I guess? :rolleyes:). Well, the CWI actually is active in a totalitarian police dictatorship with no political freedoms - China - and we certainly don't adopt such ridiculous undemocratic structures like these.

[Ismail]

The APL is hardly "secretive."

[Kaze no Kae]

Cell structure notwithstanding presumably?

[Ismail]

Cell structure notwithstanding presumably?Cell structures shouldn't really matter to anyone who isn't a party member. We don't talk to each other in coded phrases or whatever. Q has just decided to assume the worst to portray us as some sort of cultist front.

We aren't engaged in some sort of DWP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Workers_Party)-esque organizational system.

[Lenin II]

Well, who really knows? It's hard to check that with their secretive behaviour, no?The APL is a party that acknowledges that no ruling class in history has ever been taken out of power without a fight. As such, all the armed forces of the bourgeois dictatorship will attack any group once it becomes a reasonable force, say, on on the level of the Black Panthers, with all its might. It also acknowledges the bourgeoisie currently owns the police, the courts, the army and other branches of the dictatorship and holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

Many leaders such as Malcolm X or the Black panthers ended up with a bullet in their heads or strapped to the electric chair. For this reason, it sees the need, even in its beginning stages, to not publish the identity of its members, supporters and friends.


The point in posting that fun fact however was to point out the inherent undemocratic and thusly anti-worker and reactionary, features of cell structures. By "cell structure," I assume you are using this specific term as a general term for hierarchy in all its forms.

For this, I take the Engels position, personally. He can explain the fundamental concept more than I can.

From here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm


A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Cell structures supposedly have a function in a totalitarian police dictatorship with no political freedoms (which the US clearly is, I guess? :rolleyes:).The US is a militarist state ruled by imperialism. The US is not a "totalitarian" state, because such a concept does not exist in actual reality except in the mind of Hannah Arendt. The US allows bourgeois political freedoms, such as the supposed right to "free speech," without offering actual freedoms such as the right to eat, or the right to shelter or clothing, or to live without exploitation.


Well, the CWI actually is active in a totalitarian police dictatorship with no political freedoms - China - and we certainly don't adopt such ridiculous undemocratic structures like these.I cannot speak for the structure of the CWI. However, I will say that Chinese social-imperialism has increased the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but, as I said before, I do not agree with the theory of "totalitarianism," since it is a buzzword.

[Atlanta]

Just to clear up obvious misinformation, the Party for Socialism and Liberation does have members in Atlanta. If you're interested in getting in contact with them, send me a message and I can get you in contact.

sorry i wasn't aware they were in Atlanta now as well.