Last edited Tue Feb 28, 2012, 04:39 PM - Edit history (2)
brought down the Populist Party in the early 1900s, destroyed the Dean machine in 2008 and did various other dirty tricks to try and co-opt, rather than support, populist movements to ensure their own control over the party apparatus. Each organization or political party that seeks and has the means to seek real power in this country tends to resort to shit like that, because political office sadly tends to attract people who are egotists and willing to resort to subterfuge to discredit their political opponents. As for nonprofits, it's a real issue because if you have been involved in an activist group you don't like to see a pre-existing nonprofit (that by law has a private board of directors and restricted membership) claim to support what you are doing only to try and steal your thunder to advance their own pre-existing message... I've read books where they talk about the dangers just of seeking fiscal sponsorship... when an organization that is fiscally sponsored by an existing, larger nonprofit (and these are mostly lefty organizations) gets a substantial cash donation, the "parent" organizaiton will very often engineer it so that they take control of the project and get to say how the money is spent -- and that is in the realm of financial advice for nonprofits, not even taking into account political hostility towards left-libertarians or the left in general. Part of the problem is that corporate charter law in Anglo-Saxon countries is geared to make all corporations formed with the assumption that profit is the only motive, so if you want to start a nonprofit in support of a leaderless activist group they actually REQUIRE you to have a centralized, unaccountable board of directors so that there is someone the IRS can hold accountable. And yes, those are the people the gov't tries to go after, not the big corporations that steal billions, but little activist nonprofits that don't file their papers on time.
But yes, I hear a lot of complaining about unions potentially co-opting the movement coming from fellow left-libertarians and I frankly don't understand it. While it's true that many unions have become powerless and ineffectual, that certainly doesn't make them capable of co-opting anything... I always tell people "would that they WERE capable of co-opting the movement!" the rank and file that actually want to be involved in Occupy want their unions to do the right thing... The issue with unions is, unions and Occupy trying to work together and the parties can't agree on effective tactics and the unions won't commit to anything that violates their Taft-era contract stipulations preventing wildcat strikes or anything that amounts to civil disobedience (meaning the government has passed laws making unions toothless and treat them like professional associations)... and Occupiers tending to make stereotypes about union folks, I think the issue there is unions in this country are so weak that it's possible to make assumptions about people who are "in a union" instead of it being, you know, a universal pheonmenon.
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