General debate: Do YOU think activist groups can ally with a party yet stay true to themselves?

[Ken Burch]

30. We had the same thing in the U.S. in the Nineties

On the orders of our party leaders, grassroots activism basically died under Clinton, and all there was was the schemes of the "pros".

It was part of the process of silencing the left and the caucus groups in the Democratic Party that started under Paul Kirk-based on the lie that the groups were to blame for the defeat if our presidential candidates in 1980, 1984 and 1988. So the activists were essentially kicked out of any real say in the party and nothing good at all happened in return. The party ceased to mean anything after 1988, the Rainbow Coalition, at the time the only remaining grassroots Left group in all the US, disbanded on party command in 1990, and the 1992 Democratic presidential candidate ran as a passionate opponent of everyone in the grassroots. We saw the uselessness that led to. And we saw the uselessness that came when the president the Left elected in 2008 told us all to shut up and go away(include the "Obama movement" itself) AFTER the election...leaving nothing to fill the space where the activists had been.

This is what happens when the alliance between the groups and the party is TOO close.