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Why I’m Not Down With CommunismPML, Jueves, Abril 10, 2003 - 17:44
Buddy Grizzard
Free speech and totalitarian tendencies in the antiwar movement. It goes like this. Friday afternoon, Gloria LaRiva, the director of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five and president of the typographical sector of the Northern California Media Workers Union, made an appearance on the Redding News Review. The News Review, hosted by independent journalist Rob Redding and produced by yours truly, airs from 3-6 p.m. on Atlanta's News Talk 1380 WAOK. LaRiva was on the show to raise awareness of the plight of the so-called Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents detained by the U.S. government and convicted of spying on anti-Castro Cuban expats in Miami who have a history of launching terrorist attacks on Cuba. The interview went well: LaRiva concisely explained the situation with the Cuban political prisoners, and engaged in a lively debate with the host and several callers about the merits of socialism versus capitalism. LaRiva explained that she had been to Cuba twenty-seven times, and encouraged Redding to travel there and have his eyes opened to a different way of life. Other callers were sympathetic with the plight of the Cuban Five, and expressed gratitude to Redding and LaRiva for giving the issue a rare on-air forum. But there was just one hitch. Rob Redding has a serious researcher working for him now (again, aka yours truly), and so naturally he was aware that LaRiva is a four-time nominee for Vice President of the United States on the communist Workers World Party ticket. I had warned LaRiva by phone that no topic is off limits at the News Review. But when Redding mentioned her political affiliations and past political campaigns on the air (she was, after all, campaigning for the release of agents of a communist country), LaRiva became defensive. Nevertheless, the interview took a full hour, and ran over an extra fifteen minutes to get in all the calls from listeners. LaRiva was gracious to the host as I escorted her from the studio, but in the hall her tone quickly changed. LaRiva: "I guess you have to sensationalize things to make it more interesting for your listeners." Grizzard: "I don't think it's sensationalism. I think we have a responsibility to inform our listeners about the people we bring on the air. The fact that you've run for vice president four times is a relevant piece of information that I think our listeners should be aware of. That's good journalism." LaRiva: "You think that's good journalism? That's bullshit. So what…do you support Bush?" Grizzard: "I've been working to get Bush impeached for over a year." LaRiva: "Well, good luck with that." Grizzard: "It's funny how communists get when they don't control all the information." I started having questions about the communists in the activist community after attending the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) rally in D.C. on Oct. 26. David Corn got out a big red brush with which to paint the antiwar movement in the L.A. Weekly. I responded with a short piece on Atlanta IndyMedia titled, "About David Corn, the Workers World Party and the D.C. protest." The issue brought up by Corn was ANSWER's relationship with the Workers World Party. Supposedly, ANSWER was created by the International Action Center, which was in turn created by WWP. If you find my facts a bit sketchy here, my recommendation is that you send WWP an email and encourage them to start answering media inquiries from the alternative press. Sorry…where was I? Oh yes…so Corn's big beef is that WWP, through ANSWER, is co-opting the antiwar movement to get out its communist message. Things were even worse at a previous D.C. rally for Palestinian human rights and autonomy, according activist and organizer Adam Hurter. As I waited in vain for emails that I sent out to speakers from the march and the national offices of ANSWER and WWP to be returned, I was asked to be the publicity chair for the MLK March in Atlanta. This year's march and rally featured keynote speaker Rep. Barbara Lee from Oakland and carried a theme of opposition to war in Iraq. Thus, when I became an organizer for a peace march, I decided it might create the appearance of a conflict of interest if I went ahead and wrote an unfavorable piece about ANSWER (and by that point, it was most certainly going to be unfavorable). By the time I completed work on the march in January, I'd put the story out of my mind. But after Ms. LaRiva offered her critique of the News Review outside our studio, I decided it was time to have my say. I'm not down with communism because it's just another form of totalitarianism. Whereas fascism is the totalitarianism of the economic elite, communism is the totalitarianism of the intellectual elite. Communists, as far as I can tell, don't see a free press or free speech as necessary because they've already figured out what is the best way for humans to co-exist, and thus no further open discussion is needed. Here's a simple test you can do the next time you have a conversation with a communist: Ask them who the heroes were at Tiananmen Square. Were they the people who stood in front of tanks and were shot for speaking their minds? Or were the heroes the guards who shot the protestors? In the "Chomsky Reader," Noam Chomsky describes the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, where communists, fascists and anarchists vied to direct Spain's future. According to Chomsky, across Spain workers began spontaneously nationalizing industries and organizing a government from the ground up based on consensus. Chomsky said this was the most remarkable outbreak of anarcho-syndicalism the world had yet seen. Nevertheless, I've decided that I'm through being told to shut up about this story, and stop being "divisive." I've decided that any freedom won through self-censorship is a freedom not worth having. Buddy Grizzard (bud...@georgiapeace.org) is the producer of the Redding News Review and a contributor to GNN. He will deliver what he terms a "scathing, well-researched denouncement of the War on Drugs" at the 10th Annual Great Atlanta Pot Festival on 4/20 at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, a free event featuring performances by Lil Jon and the EastSide Boys and Peter Tosh Legacy. GNN invites Gloria LaRiva and representatives of ANSWER, WWP and IAC to respond unedited to this article here on GNN.tv. To discuss this Article and other issues please visit the Guerrilla News Forum
This article was published on the Guerilla news network on april 8.
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