Talk:Campus Antiwar Network
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[edit] Critical links
If I could find more links to criticism (from left or right) that'd be good. Free Republic is far from ideal. But that's what I turned up on Google...
- DKalkin
- Note: this means criticism of CAN. Not criticism of the ISO in 2001 or at Camp Casey or whatever - criticism of the ISO in CAN maybe. DKalkin
Half of the CAN coordinating committee were members of the ISO when it started (I was at the foundign conference), and that number is likely the same today. There is an interesting split between CAN and the rest of the progressive student activist movement. Pretty much every other major national student activist organization (over a dozen of them) got together and formed the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC) at the same time as CAN was forming. The ISO presence in CAN was likely a large factor in the split. CAN is more grassroots (though it gets a strong sense of direction from having many people with shared politics), whereas NYSPC is more top-down. Both organizations lack any significant funding. -Aaron Kreider-
- For what it's worth, a minority of CAN's coordinating committee is in the ISO. I agree with the assessment that CAN is more grassroots and NYSPC more top-down. I also haven't seen any evidence that NYSPC has had much base on the ground for over a year.
I don't believe the sentence that's been added a couple times here without comment in the discussion, to the effect that old documents show some activist groups in the past were supported by Communist governments, is relevant to CAN. Here are the reasons I consider it irrelevant:
- 1. I have never seen any documentation of this charge being leveled in or against CAN before. Is there a citation that anyone involved with observing, writing about or participating in the anti-war movement has ever believed this?
- 2. The only socialist group that I'm aware of with a presence of any substantial size in CAN is the International Socialist Organization. But the ISO does not identify with any government that calls itself "communist" (unlike the old Communist Party, which actively identified with Stalinist Russia, and Maoist groups that identify with China, or groups identifying with Cuba). This would thus seem a particularly strange criticism.
I believe this is actually a general anti-communist or anti-activist criticism that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article about CAN. It is not a criticism of CAN I have ever encountered before. Therefore I have removed this sentence and don't think it should be put back in without citations (relevant to CAN, not just to old Communist Party involvement in past activist groups that was directed by Russian policy). Catsv 00:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)catsv
- Well, it appears Morton devonshire has been adding that exact same claim to all kinds of left-wing pages, along with other NPOV changes. I shouldn't have responded so seriously; it's evident this was something closer to vandalism. Catsv 01:45, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Many CAN activists play down their ISO affiliation. But find a local chapter and one discovers the percentage of ISO members is generally higher than 50%. It's too bad that so many activists will not work with the ISO. They're very well organized. Unfortunately the ISO models itself after the Russian Bolsheviks. And the Bolshies eventually killed most of their one-time allies on the left. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.152.191.253 (talk • contribs).
[edit] Serious lack of objectivity here.
This page was apparently written by an ISO/CAN member. It reads more like an advert than an encyclopedia entry.
