Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Progressive Labor Party

“Chicken Little in Boston”


The “Chicken Little Faction” (N.C. Article)

In September, Jared called long distance to Milt (who was in California) to tell him that the sky was falling.

“What should I do?” he trembled over the phone. “They’re picketing my house.” That was the week that the Boston papers were screaming daily racist hysteria about “black killers on the loose”(that was the week a white woman–Wagler–had been killed allegedly by some black gang members though subsequent information proved this a lie).

Boston had become the first staging ground for the ruling class’ new wave of racist hysteria (San Francisco has since become staging area #2). Not unnaturally, our party, and Jared in particular, were special targets of this attack.

To Be Attacked By The Enemy Is a Good Thing – But only if you fight back.

Jared and the Boston PL leadership group basically turned tail and RAN. Oh, there was a brief flurry of activity–under strong urging by Milt and the NC (sit-in at Globe and some leaflets). But the racist hysteria scared the hell out of Jared and the Boston PL leadership. Or maybe it was the black kids organizing in the streets to fight back–or maybe both... And now, within 5 months–

*“Bold Action Is Bad”
*(we need politics, not action. Workers don’t need us for action; they need us only for ideology)
*“Mack Avenue was a fiasco”(same as above and they were black workers)
*“We’re recruiting too many black people”
*We should be overcoming the ideological obstacles which create racism among white workers–not recruiting blacks. (*Recruiting black people does not help defeat racism among whites)
*The black students leading PL and SDS at Wayne State are adventurists because they want to disrupt racist professors’ classes
*“Walt R. is shit”. Also all the black PLers in Detroit
*John Harris’ speech at the PL convention was a “rah-rah” horror (of course this is Milt’s fault–John could not be a horror all by himself)
*Dolores G. and Luis C. have made Challenge-Desafio a horrible thing (again, this is Milt’s fault –as in above)
*Black people are being recruited “on too low a level”, “let in”. (But who sets the limits and who lets whom in?)

And finally the coup de grace:

*Interracial marriages are bad (Yes, Virginia, this is the Boston former PL leadership saying this, not the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan)

One black PL member in Cleveland was told by the Chicken Little crowd –not only are interracial marriages bad (several people were told that). But here’s why they’re bad: Because if you’re white and you work in a factory and you bring home white workers, how will you explain that your spouse is black? (Note: presumably white students–or bosses– wouldn’t have such a problem since their friends would understand such “aberrations”).

Is there a connection between the September events in Boston and the Chicken Little Faction’s position of today?

One thing is clear–when a communist party stops fighting racism, it doesn’t take long for the sky to fall.

The Wagler thing woke us up–dealing with obstacles among the people (is the) key task... – Chicken Little document, last page.