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January 13, 2004

Be Vewy Quiet, I'm Hunting Mawxists!

Finally, some campaign reportage I can enjoy:

"Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean today accepted the endorsement of the Workers World Party, declaring that the time had come 'for black and white to unite and fight for a Worker’s World.' Together with his endorsements by the International Socialist Organization, the Spartacist League, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, the WWP announcement appeared to solidify Dean’s standing as the candidate of the far left."

[...]

"When pressed on the critical question of 'worker’s councils' as opposed to the formation of a "revolutionary vanguard," however, Dean seemed to waffle, and his hesitation was immediately criticized by his Democratic rivals, especially Joseph Lieberman, who accused Dean of having "gone down the spider hole of crypto-anarcho-syndicalism"...

It's a mark of Portland's truly sleepy nature that we don't have any real Spartacists willing to show their faces in public. We get the occasional guy peddling copies of Socialist Worker, but no street theater from The Revolutionary Communist Party, which is still apparently fully under the control of Chairman Bob.

I also don't think we even have any Situationists to battle all these non-existent leftists. In fact, the usual hiding place of anyone who's read anything by a Situationist is whatever gaggle of black-clad anarcho-punks happens through to taunt the liberals down at the demonstration, and I've observed first-hand that our black-clad anarcho-punks are far too busy descending into total paranoia over whether I'm a federal agent when I try to take a picture of them using their own anti-war literature to catch a flag on fire to read their Vaneigem.

I can't believe I'm asking, but where do you go for political sport in this town? When you're tired of wondering how long it will be before a mayoral candidate releases a 900kb PDF outlining his/her position on The Snow Problem, or just wishing there was a coffee shop with a predictable clientele you could count on to provide that one, earnest member of the ISO for a little red-baiting, where's the place to be? Points off to anyone who suggests hassling the Greenpeace canvassers out in front of Powell's ... that's like hanging out in the cafeteria and tripping the president of the local Amnesty Chapter.