Thank you!

"Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion."

To my ear, this sounds like the exact opposite of what should happen.
First off, why doom a movement that is being born before our eyes by chaining it to a corpse? The quickest way to make multitudes of people stop listening immediately is to say it has anything to do with " the left ". These people are in the streets, doing something beside talking. In other words, being the polar opposite of a twenty first century liberal.
Secondly, in my opinion this isn't time for diversity. This is the time for Unity. We the People. The 99% who are being slapped around by the 1% bullies. The Working Class that has been used for a profit then thrown aside by the corporate pigs. That's who we all are, black, white, city, country, gay, straight, whatever. Do you have to do some kind of work to make ends meet? OK then, you are a member of the Working Class. That is what will bind us, make us one voice. I would love to hear a member of the corporate propaganda media come up with a convincing arguement to make the Working Class see the Working Class as the problem.
That is how I feel about it. I am a 52 year old Union carpenter who has seen America go from a place where anyone who wanted to work could find a job to a place where the Working Class is the colateral damage of capitalism. Last year I had 2 months worth of work. This year I was lucky. I got 4 months and enough hours to get insurance for my wife and I. I live between Providence, RI and Boston, MA , both of which are being "occupied" and plenty of time on my hands. I've heard enough talk, see you in the streets!

The other systems have already failed, over and over so lets try them again, lol. No sense of history will insure similar results

*If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movement.

An excellent argument, easy to grasp and difficult to refute. .

What would happen if "Veterans for Peace" went to the demonstration in full uniform and armed to the teeth, like the Tea Partiers?

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government"

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"

-- George Washington

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.

-- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.

...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents."

-- Don B. Kates, writing on statistical patterns in gun crime

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

-- John F. Kennedy

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.

-- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775

& what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 5 1788

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788

"To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

-- George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788

[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.

-- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93

Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'

-- Mao Tse-tung, 1938, inadvertently endorsing the Second Amendment.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

-- Hitler, April 11 1942

No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before.

-- Colin Greenwood, in the study "Firearms Control", 1972

Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."

-- Edward Abbey, "Abbey's Road", 1979

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

-- John F. Kennedy