chegitz guevara
16th September 2008, 15:40
This past weekend in Miami I attended a meeting of the Miami May Day Coalition.
It was notable for a number of reasons.
First, white revolutionaries were in the wee minority.
Second, Trotskyists, Maoists, and other revolutionaries were all together in a room without any sectarianism.
MMDC started in April, to, as the name suggests, build a radical May Day celebration. It was insane. We didn't have enough time and it's Miami, home of right-wing Cuban death squads. We had two hundred+ people show up, many wearing red shirts and many more with red flags, marching down the street with lots of support from the street and people even joining it.
Summer time in South Florida is not a period of much activity. Even those of us acclimated to the heat and humidity have a hard time. Pretty much the only thing that will get us out is the tomato workers, as they have to suffer even more oppressive conditions. We can show that much solidarity, at least, to picket in August for them.
To start with, we are building for the national call on the 27th against attacking Iran. If I recall correctly, we are also building for a national call for the defense of immigrant rights on the 12th of October.
But it's not just about building demos. We're going to do educationals. We're going to start a study group. We're going to do some guerrilla theater. One comrade suggested showing images of blown up children from the occupation on building walls with a projector.
This is not the meeting I've been building, either, but a parallel effort. In Fort Lauderdale, we've had now, three meetings of what I'm calling, alternatively, the Socialist Organizing Committee and Sunday Night Socialism. We meet on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month. The first meeting is a business, activist oriented meeting. The 2nd an educational one.
Something stuff going on down here we're planning to organize around. One, the privatization of "Alligator Alley" as the only expressway through the Everglades is known. The company that is looking to buy our road is the same one that owns the Indiana Toll Road, which, as I understand it, is falling apart and no longer has an exit to I-65. The public hearing here in Broward County for this is Wednesday evening.
Second, in the town of Davie, just to my west, a land owner has decided to evict 940 families from his mobile home park to develop it. He's offering no compensation and they have to be out by February. The town council says their hands are tied, there's nothing they can do. They voted to give them a little compensation, but it's not near enough. In any event, mobile home parks are disappearing from South Florida, and we don't have anymore land on which to make new ones. South Florida is essentially a spit of land between the Atlantic and the Everglades. That means these people either have to leave the area, in order to keep their trailers, or they have to lose their property and join an already overcrowded apartment rental market. The meeting for this is . . . Wednesday evening.
Third, in the town of Coral Springs, developers and the town council want to rezone 43 acres of wetlands to put in some big box stores. The community packed the city hall hearing, so the town lawyer filibustered and spoke for three hours. Citizens weren't allowed to speak until 1am!!! By that time, most folks had left, and the students that had organized the opposition had to leave. The next hearing is on the 25th.
Our September reading is Engels, The Principles of Communism. We never got around to discussing it in August as the presentation on Draper's Two Souls of Socialism went way over the allotted time slot. The presentation next time will be on Market Think. The idea behind the presentations is kind of like a commie Toastmasters. Get one comrade to do a presentation about anything she or he wants to do. After all, commies and socialists need a well rounded education. The October reading is going to be Ken MacLeod's, The Cassini Division, which is science fiction. It's also Ken's description of life in a future communist Solar System, Ken being a Scottish Trotskyist.
So, that's it. Still haven't met with the Miami Workers Center or the Black Mangrove Collective. I'll be attending a fundraiser for the later this weekend. They're trying to set up a left wing coffee shop in Miami for all of us to use.
In a lot of ways, Miami is virgin territory for the left. For so long, the left was physically suppressed here. Unlike in much of the rest of the country, Miami has death squads, though not so active lately. They haven't killed anyone since the mid 90s, but a witness who was to testify against Luis Posada Carilles (the Osama Bin Laden of the Western hemisphere) found a pipe bomb under his car. Maybe it was the gusanos, maybe not, as the dude then put it in his car and drove it to the police station.
In any event, this has prevented any kind of left community or culture from developing here. So we've got no old grudges with each other, no bad history to overcome. We're just comrades in different groups, working together. If we succeed here, I hope that we can be a model for comrades in the rest of the country.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
It was notable for a number of reasons.
First, white revolutionaries were in the wee minority.
Second, Trotskyists, Maoists, and other revolutionaries were all together in a room without any sectarianism.
MMDC started in April, to, as the name suggests, build a radical May Day celebration. It was insane. We didn't have enough time and it's Miami, home of right-wing Cuban death squads. We had two hundred+ people show up, many wearing red shirts and many more with red flags, marching down the street with lots of support from the street and people even joining it.
Summer time in South Florida is not a period of much activity. Even those of us acclimated to the heat and humidity have a hard time. Pretty much the only thing that will get us out is the tomato workers, as they have to suffer even more oppressive conditions. We can show that much solidarity, at least, to picket in August for them.
To start with, we are building for the national call on the 27th against attacking Iran. If I recall correctly, we are also building for a national call for the defense of immigrant rights on the 12th of October.
But it's not just about building demos. We're going to do educationals. We're going to start a study group. We're going to do some guerrilla theater. One comrade suggested showing images of blown up children from the occupation on building walls with a projector.
This is not the meeting I've been building, either, but a parallel effort. In Fort Lauderdale, we've had now, three meetings of what I'm calling, alternatively, the Socialist Organizing Committee and Sunday Night Socialism. We meet on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month. The first meeting is a business, activist oriented meeting. The 2nd an educational one.
Something stuff going on down here we're planning to organize around. One, the privatization of "Alligator Alley" as the only expressway through the Everglades is known. The company that is looking to buy our road is the same one that owns the Indiana Toll Road, which, as I understand it, is falling apart and no longer has an exit to I-65. The public hearing here in Broward County for this is Wednesday evening.
Second, in the town of Davie, just to my west, a land owner has decided to evict 940 families from his mobile home park to develop it. He's offering no compensation and they have to be out by February. The town council says their hands are tied, there's nothing they can do. They voted to give them a little compensation, but it's not near enough. In any event, mobile home parks are disappearing from South Florida, and we don't have anymore land on which to make new ones. South Florida is essentially a spit of land between the Atlantic and the Everglades. That means these people either have to leave the area, in order to keep their trailers, or they have to lose their property and join an already overcrowded apartment rental market. The meeting for this is . . . Wednesday evening.
Third, in the town of Coral Springs, developers and the town council want to rezone 43 acres of wetlands to put in some big box stores. The community packed the city hall hearing, so the town lawyer filibustered and spoke for three hours. Citizens weren't allowed to speak until 1am!!! By that time, most folks had left, and the students that had organized the opposition had to leave. The next hearing is on the 25th.
Our September reading is Engels, The Principles of Communism. We never got around to discussing it in August as the presentation on Draper's Two Souls of Socialism went way over the allotted time slot. The presentation next time will be on Market Think. The idea behind the presentations is kind of like a commie Toastmasters. Get one comrade to do a presentation about anything she or he wants to do. After all, commies and socialists need a well rounded education. The October reading is going to be Ken MacLeod's, The Cassini Division, which is science fiction. It's also Ken's description of life in a future communist Solar System, Ken being a Scottish Trotskyist.
So, that's it. Still haven't met with the Miami Workers Center or the Black Mangrove Collective. I'll be attending a fundraiser for the later this weekend. They're trying to set up a left wing coffee shop in Miami for all of us to use.
In a lot of ways, Miami is virgin territory for the left. For so long, the left was physically suppressed here. Unlike in much of the rest of the country, Miami has death squads, though not so active lately. They haven't killed anyone since the mid 90s, but a witness who was to testify against Luis Posada Carilles (the Osama Bin Laden of the Western hemisphere) found a pipe bomb under his car. Maybe it was the gusanos, maybe not, as the dude then put it in his car and drove it to the police station.
In any event, this has prevented any kind of left community or culture from developing here. So we've got no old grudges with each other, no bad history to overcome. We're just comrades in different groups, working together. If we succeed here, I hope that we can be a model for comrades in the rest of the country.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara