Roundtable on Obama's Victory

The ISO has put together a roundtable discussion on "What's next for the struggle during the Obama era". It's worth checking out. Includes the likes of Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Donna Smith (of "SiCKO" fame) as well as other SocialistWorker.org regulars.

Here are some tidbits:

Howard Zinn:

"So it will take a revivified social movement to do for Obama what the strikers and tenant organizers and unemployed councils and agitators of the early 1930s did for FDR, pushing him into new paths, so angering the superrich that FDR, in one of his best moments, said, "They hate me, and I welcome their hatred!"

Obama needs such fire. It is up to us, the citizenry--and non-citizens too!--to ignite it."

Mike Davis:

"The Republicans now know what 1968 was like for the Democrats. Blue victories in formerly bedrock Red suburbs are stunning invasions of the enemy's electoral heartland, comparable to George Wallace's and Richard Nixon's victories more than a generation ago in Northern ethnic-white, CIO neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the desperate marriage-in-hell of Palin and McCain warns of the imminent divorce of mega-church faithful and the country-club sinners. The Bush coalition built by Karl Rove's thuggish genius is breaking up."

For a surprisingly similar (i.e. "social movement pressure" strategy), but "center-Left" version of the ISO roundtable, take a look at the Dissent crowd's reaction here.