TIM MARSHALL, an activist in the United States socialist organisation Solidarity, will be attending the Resistance National Conference at Sydney University July 8-10 and the Campus Activist Forum on July 16. ROBERTO JORQUERA, a Resistance national committee member, interviewed Marshall for Green Left Weekly about Solidarity and left politics in the US.
What issues does Solidarity campaign around?
I have been a member of Solidarity for over three years and am active in Oakland, California. Solidarity, formed in 1986 from three smaller groups, is part of a left regroupment currently under way in the US. It is a national organisation with about 350 members.
The sectarianism of the '70s and '80s really decimated the US left. It is time to break from the politics of the Democrats and the Republicans and build a party of workers, feminists, radical youth, people of colour and minority groups.
We are active in the rank and file of the trade union movement; we sponsor Labor Notes, which is pretty influential in the labour movement.
We are also campaigning for a national health care plan. We say that a national health care system should be a right of every citizen, rather than a privilege.
Racist and anti-immigrant campaigns are being led by the Democrat and Republican parties in California. Solidarity is involved in pro-immigrant campaigns. A couple of weeks ago about 20,000 people, including many Latin Americans who came to the US looking for work or refuge, participated in a rally to highlight the poverty this sector faces.
What campaigns and organisations are students involved in?
There are a number of issues that students could be, and should be, organising around. But, unfortunately, there is a lot of talk and little organisation.
In California tuition fees for public universities have increased about 300% in the last four years. The university system is more and more catering only for an elite who can afford to pay. The problem is that there is no network of campus activists in California.
However, some student campaigns have been successful. About a year ago, the Chicano [Mexican American] students at the University of California organised a series of protests and demonstrations demanding a Chicano studies department.
A lot of work has been done by the Environmental Activist Coalition, which is largely based in the mid-west and on the east coast. Its 2000 activists do a lot of work with local communities around environmental racism. They campaign against those businesses which dump toxic waste and set up incinerators which emit poisons into the air.
What issues has the women's movement taken up on campus and in the community?
On campuses, there is a whole new controversy about rape and sexual harassment. But women have mostly focused on the pro-choice issue as anti-abortion activist groups on campus have grown. In California the National Organisation of Women is organising to defend abortion clinics from fundamentalist Christians who want to shut them down.
Women's groups will continue to lead the charge against the right wing. However, the women's movement is in retreat in terms of national politics; poor women are still denied access to abortion, which is illegal in most states.
What are the lessons of the Los Angeles riots?
I was in Los Angeles during the riots that followed the not guilty verdict for the police officers who beat Rodney King. It was a very intense period. On the first night, not usually reported on, there was a political protest. What started as a democratic, multiracial demonstration outside the LA police headquarters, only later on became increasingly confrontational and then out of control.
The lesson for the left is that it should try to relate to groups like those traditionally isolated communities which participated in the riots. It would have been a lot more productive to have had a march of 1 million people, which could have created a political movement and won demands over time.