I’m going to do one post here that’s a new sort of post for me, there might be some more on the same theme in the next weeks and/or months. To a small degree it’ll involve me getting a little personal (something I have overwhelmingly avoided while doing this blog), but will be mostly political and in-line with the themes of this blog. And for now I will provide only the most relevant information, I will give basically zero background and won’t mention other things related to the topic. I am doing this because I believe there are a lot of people out there who really don’t like me, mostly because of a failure on my part to explain things.
In June of 2001, I was a very active member of the Young Democratic Socialists, youth wing of the Democratic Socialists of America. I had been a member of DSA since 1994-1995 and was often active. During those first seven years I was involved to some degree with about 25 events. Not counting about five events (i.e. events in Denver, or in the dorms) there was an average of 65 people at each event I organized. (I resigned my membership in DSA in May of 2002) I think that is basically all the background you need.
In June 2001, Sinn Fein overtook the Social Democratic and Labour Party as the largest party of the nationalist community. This was in two elections on the same day- local elections using Single Transferable Vote and Proportional Representation and British parliamentary elections that are First Past the Post. I sent something about the results to the YDS-Discussion list. Someone responded and asked if YDS had a position on N. Ireland.
I’m going to skip some details at this point. I said I would type something up (I was a member of the leadership at that point). After a month, with a fair amount of discussion and a fairly (possibly very) good job done by me, I withdrew it. There were too many problems with it.
The main point of me typing this up is to explain one of the arguments I offered in support of YDS taking a position on N. Ireland (of course that position would have to be more or less (possibly very less) in support of Irish Republicanism for this to work). I felt like the good that could be done with such a resolution (encouraging people to work on that issue to one degree or another (from one person signing a petition that’s going around to a YDS chapter doing an event on this issue)) was obvious, so I unfortunately didn’t say much if anything at all about that (I said a lot about the background to the conflict, but not, “this will help...”). One of the reasons that I DID offer was that it would help us attract a certain part of the population- Irish-Americans (depending on what the resolution said, we’d probably be talking about people who are more or less Sinn Fein supporters). Without further explanation by me, this must have sounded questionable, and that’s probably what a lot of YDSers thought; or thought it was even worse than questionable. Here are some things I should have mentioned:
*I was thinking overwhelmingly about I-As who are already liberal (liberals who are in transition towards the left), progressive or left-wing. (UPDATE 11/8/20 My thoughts about the word "liberal" are here; my brief definition of a liberal is someone to the left of the Clintons and to the right of Sen. Elizabeth Warren)
*There’s a good minority of those Americans who work on this from the right perspective who are not Irish-American, and about 1/2 of such people are people of color. I was also thinking it would attract some of them. For more of my thoughts on that, see this, this, and this one is also relevant.
*Going back to attracting people interested in N. Ireland, which would at least often if not mostly mean Irish-Americans, I should explain that even with the latter group, I don’t see the harm, although I can sort of understand people thinking I’m an idiot or an ass-hole. But YDS and DSA wanted to attract more members (**which would include attracting people to an anti-racist agenda**) and I saw that as the icing on the cake of making an important statement on an important issue.
*On a related note, the issue of N. Ireland can be used to drag Irish-Americans towards the Left (talk with them about how N. Ireland is not the only place with bigotry, national oppression, etc.). That would be most successful if it involved a left-wing group that appreciated the importance of the N. Ireland issue ( I explain why it’s important for American political activists in this post (starting about 1/3 down with the paragraph starting "Was S. Africa much worse?").
I think that should clarify what I meant.
Tom
UPDATE 2/6/13 About a month after my proposed statement was discussed among YDSers online, I spoke briefly with two senior members of DSA about this. I didn't say much, certainly not everything i've typed above, but I said something that made my idea sound better than when I first mentioned it in that online YDS discussion. One of these senior members agreed with me, and maybe the other one too, at least to a small degree.
UPDATE 11/6/20 A related and much higher-quality post about my interest in Irish-American activism is here.
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