Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/64

 ''he old methods of work and forms of action fail to capture the imaginations of the comstituencies we are trying to reach. Why advocate an intermediate strategy, a transitional analysis of how we should fight? Primarily because of the character of the times. —Should we continue demonstrations and teach-ins? Organize the poor? Fight for student power? Organize within the working class? Resist the draft? Run radical candidates in the elections? Turn the hippies into Provos? The answer to all these questions is 'Yes' (No little doubt remains that America needs to be fundamentally changed.) We need to move from protest to resistance; to dig in for the long haul; to become full-time, radical, sustained, relevant. In short, we need to make a revolution. —Had we been organized along continuous lines since our beginning we may not have lost 100,000 members over the years. With the political situation in America today we cannot afford to lose people because we do not treat their needs organizationally. On this point, at least, Mao is relevant to our movement: there can be no revolution without a revolutionary organization. —We should be leading large numbers of young people on the campuses and in the streets in struggles that focus on fighting for power. —If modern history demonstrates little else it is the absolute need for a broad, anti-imperialist and anti-racist organization of the radical left, a grouping which would develop a long-range strategy for taking power in America and would devise tactics within such a strategic context-tactics, needless to say, which would not always be dictated by the vicissitudes of the day. —Clearly the missing ingredient is a broad, radical organization which would include many thousands of individuals and some organizations of the left who are isolated or so fractured as to have no impact The organization we have in mind would provide independent radicals with a base to work from, a grouping within which to find revolutionary relevance. Since we are far from the answers which must be attained before being in a position to say, 'we have the theory, the practice, the strategy, the tactic,' we do not envision a revolutionary party at this point. But we can envision an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist organization, at first containing many already existing elements of the left, broadening to include a diversity of Americans-workers, students, blacks, minorities, the poor. Although it is hardly likely all independent radicals would fit comfortably into a multi-issue movement, we are convinced a great many could do so with ease-and profit for the movement for revolutionary change. —It should be understood that a resistance movement is by no means a coherent and consistent totaltiy. It is not a revolutionary party, nor does it see itself as such. A resistance strategy would emphasize constituency organizing as a prior and''