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→The Great Wokening
Aleksandar Katai, a [[Serbia]]n soccer who played with the Los Angeles Galaxy, wife posted criticism of the Minneapolis rioters in Serbian. Someone noticed, translated the posting and criticized her. She deleted the posting. Katai's wife was in Chicago when she wrote the post, and Aleksandar may not have even been aware of the post. Riot protesters arrived at the Los Angeles stadium to call for Alexander's firing. The management of the L.A. Galaxy forced Alexander Katai to apologize for his wife, and then to denounce her. Then they made him endorse Black Lives Matter, which he did, and then they fired him anyway.<ref>https://skugal.org/racist-violent-la-galaxy-fire-aleksandar-katai-over-wifes-shocking-social-media-posts-about-us-police-brutality-protests/</ref> Then Katai was attacked on his way out for something he didn't do, may not have even been aware of, in a language most Americans don't understand.<ref>https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/la-galaxy-releases-aleksandar-katai-amid-wifes-racist-posts/</ref>
Aleksandar Katai, a [[Serbia]]n soccer who played with the Los Angeles Galaxy, wife posted criticism of the Minneapolis rioters in Serbian. Someone noticed, translated the posting and criticized her. She deleted the posting. Katai's wife was in Chicago when she wrote the post, and Aleksandar may not have even been aware of the post. Riot protesters arrived at the Los Angeles stadium to call for Alexander's firing. The management of the L.A. Galaxy forced Alexander Katai to apologize for his wife, and then to denounce her. Then they made him endorse Black Lives Matter, which he did, and then they fired him anyway.<ref>https://skugal.org/racist-violent-la-galaxy-fire-aleksandar-katai-over-wifes-shocking-social-media-posts-about-us-police-brutality-protests/</ref> Then Katai was attacked on his way out for something he didn't do, may not have even been aware of, in a language most Americans don't understand.<ref>https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/la-galaxy-releases-aleksandar-katai-amid-wifes-racist-posts/</ref>
==Van Jones on rectification==
[[CNN]] analyst [[Van Jones]] wrote on his experience with Maoist rectification:
Jones writes in ''Reclaiming Revolution'':
{{quotebox|We contrasted [[Alinsky]] organizing models, [[SNCC]]'s grassroots model and [[Marxist-Leninist]] methods of mass work. We worked to develop a basic understanding of Marxist and Leninist histories, theories and politics. Members also worked to identify the features of the current historical period and discussed what it would take to build towards a revolutionary period.
Outside of the organization, a group of movement veterans, intrigued by STORM's interest in Marxist politics, organized a series of study
groups. STORM members, along with other young [[leftist]]s, thus got a chance to study Marx's critique of capitalism and revolutionary strategy together with trained communists.
This rectification<ref>"Rectification" is a term used in the communist tradition to describe an organizational effort to get back on track, to rectify past errors.</ref> was an important period in STORM's political development and consolidation. All of STORM's members developed a basic
understanding of and commitment to revolutionary Marxist politics - with a particular emphasis on the historical experiences of Third World communist movements. Our understanding of these politics and histories, though still relatively crude, was extremely significant in the development of our work. For the first time, STORM had a shared ideological framework, giving us a common basis for developing our political analysis, our structure and our program.
During this time, we developed our analysis of and approach to the current historical period. We came to believe that the central role of revolutionaries today is to help build "resistance struggles" in oppressed communities around immediate reform issues and to use this resistance work to lay the groundwork for the development of a more clearly revolutionary struggle. We called this approach "Moving From Resistance to Revolution." See "STORM's Politics" for a more thorough discussion of these points.
'''Applying the Lessons of Rectification'''
We now believed that revolutionary Marxist politics would be central to the development of a successful liberation movement in this country. We also thought that we needed to build an organization that maintained its commitment to these politics.
But our new political commitment to Marxist-Leninist politics raised many questions about our structure and potential for relevance and growth. Most young activists around us - particularly women and people of color - were hostile to revolutionary Marxism. Would new members undermine our new political unity and commitment to red politics? Would there be political differences too large to resolve without divisive struggle and destructive arguments?
Looking around us, we didn't think it was possible to build an explicitly Marxist organization. And after the previous period of division and
power struggles, it seemed risky to bring new people into our but recently - and delicately - cohered group.
To deal with these issues, STORM adopted a two-tiered membership structure with a leadership "Core" and a "General Membership." All Core Members had to be explicitly committed to revolutionary Marxist politics. General Members did not, although they could not be hostile to red politics either. Instead, General Members had only to support STORM's Points of Unity, which were not explicitly Marxist.
'''411: Political Education Committee'''
In 1998, STORM created 411. For the first time, STORM had a formal committee in charge of providing structured training for both the Core and the General Membership. 411 was also responsible for orienting new members. 411 was important in collectivizing STORM's commitment to Marxist politics.
411 facilitated political education trainings in every membership meeting. It also conducted bi-monthiy weekend "intensives." We began with Marxist "basics," laying a foundation on which to build an understanding of Third World communism. We studied philosophy, wage exploitation, capitalism, imperialism and globalization, Lenin's theories of the state, revolution and the party, and the political ideas of Mao Tse-tung and [[Antonio Gramsci]].
Later sessions covered more "contemporary" issues, including Marxist [[feminism]], [[transgender]] liberation, and the [[Palestinian]] liberation struggle. We continued to study the Marxist tradition, including [[dialectical materialism]] and member-initiated studies of Mao's "On Practice" and "On Contradiction". We also had skills trainings (e.g., revolutionary organizing, self-care for cadre, evaluation). Members were also expected to attend SOUL's Revolutionary Sunday Schools to study the history of Third World revolutions.
STORM's methodological approach to political education was distinct. To make the material more accessible to our members, 411 used interactive
methods rather than traditional left study methods like reading and lecture.
In general, members had a low level of discipline with regards to political education. They often failed to read. Attendance at in-depth training sessions, held outside of meetings, was inconsistent. Members were busy in their mass work, leaving little time to schedule adequate training sessions.
We devoted what time we had to learning basic concepts. We rarely got beyond interactive, but often shallow, pedagogical methods and tools. As a
result, members often developed only a crude understanding (sometimes not much deeper than a slogan) of complicated political ideas.
411 designed these trainings and workshops as introductions to the basics of different political theories. But these introductory sessions were the only spaces within STORM for political discussion. This left more advanced members with virtually no organizational time or space for deeper, more nuanced study or discussion. It also left members with little opportunity to discuss the material's applicability to their mass work. This lack of deeper discussion became a problem for STORM's political development.}}
==See also==
==See also==