Eric Mann

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Eric Mann

Eric Mann is associated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization. He is the husband of Lian Hurst Mann.

Leaders

Labor/Community Strategy Center leaders December 2019.

Communist ties

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Eric Mann always been an anti-imperialist internationalist, in support of international campaigns such as U.S. Out of Vietnam and Boycott Apartheid South Africa as well as the historic efforts of the world communist movement to form international organizations.

Based on lessons from these experiences, I believe the conditions for successful international work are based on support for the right of self-determination for oppressed nations and protection of the strength and integrity of constituent organizations. I do not view this as a question to individuals but to organizations. I have always been part of an organization—from CORE to SDS to League of Revolutionary Struggle, to the New Directions Movement of the United Auto Workers, to the Strategy Center. Each organization has had many international relationships.
But not every invitation is positive or will have a positive outcome. The Strategy Center would respond to any invitation but would not participate in any initiative to form a single international organization (in which currently independent organizations become subordinate as “chapters” to the international) or any initiative based on the subordination of national sovereignty of nations and peoples oppressed by U.S. and European imperialism in the name of an abstract, colorblind, “working class” that considers movements of national liberation a threat.

Eric Mann's Strategy Center has had many successful international relationships—as an NGO at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and the UN World Conference on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, where we worked on the NGO organizing committee and Mann spoke to the UN on behalf of the NGO organizations against a theory of “partnerships” between NGOs and polluting corporations. There the Strategy Center developed relations with the African National Congress (ANC), Congress of South African Trade Unions, (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). The Strategy Center has been invited and sent delegations to Cuba, Chiapas, the SUTAUR-100 (Mexico), France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. They have allied with trade union organizations and environmental justice/indigenous peoples campaigns. We have participated in the World Social Forums in Venezuela and Brazil.

The Strategy Center has also allied in many nation-wide coalitions—some based on significant strategic and tactical agreement, such as the First and Second People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summits, the Black Radical Congress, and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (each initiated by other organizations) and the current Transit Riders for Public Transportation (which we initiated). We also have sought participation in formations with much broader temporary unities, such as the Boston Social Forum, the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta and, coming in 2010, in Detroit. We have also participated in explicit nation-wide left-building projects within the United States, with grassroots organizations as well as with anti-imperialist and socialist organizations—Freedom Road Socialist Organization, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and other organizations with whom we had significant disagreements but wanted to pursue a long-term strategic unity. We want to see organizations coalesce but envision coalitions and federations of organizations, not an international or national single organization of individuals gathering in regional chapters.[2]

SDS activist

Eric Mann, once a Students for a Democratic Society activist, was an auto worker since 1978.[3]

Weatherman

Eric M. Mann and two other Weathermen-all accused of participating in the September 1969 violent disruption of Harvard's Center for International Affairs-were released yesterday without bond from the jail at which they were being held on a felony charge growing out of a different disruption.

Judge Reuben A. Lurie '21, of the Suffolk County Superior Court, released Mann, Henry A. Olson, and Philip C. Nies from the Charles Street Jail on personal recognizance after hearing an appeal for reduced bond from William P. Homans Jr. '48, counsel for the three. Bond had been set at $7500 for Mann and at $5000 for each of the other two.

"I was only going to ask Judge Luric to reduce bond to $1000 cash," said Homans, who defended former Harvard graduate student Michael Ferber in the "Spock Trials" last year. "But when I saw which way the judge was thinking, I decided to ask for no bail-and got it."

Mann, Olson, and Nies are wanted for allegedly committing assault and battery with a dangerous weapon at a disruption of Boston English High School on October 1. Matthew A. King, the detective sergeant at Division 10 of the Boston Police Department who signed the complaint against Mann, is the brother of Patrick King, the Boston English football coach whom each of the three allegedly attacked with a "dangerous weapon" -a stick.[4]

Weathermen Flint "War Council"

December 27-31, 1969, about 400 of the national membership of the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society held a “War Council” at a ballroom dancehall in Flint, Michigan. Posters of a giant cardboard machinegun, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevera, and Fidel Castro hung everywhere.

Among the attendees of the “War Council in Flint" identified by the Flint police department and/or its informant were: Michael Avey, Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers, Edward Benedict, Margaret Bennett, Douglas Bernhardt, Jeff Blum, Harvey Blume, David Chase, Peter Clapp, Judy Clark, Bernardine Dohrn, Diane Donghi, Linda Evans, Brian Flannigan, David Flatley, John Fuerst, Lynn Ray Garvin, Bert Garskof, Michele Garskoff, Mark Glasser, Theodore Gold, Lenny Handlesman, Ann Hathaway, Karen Hardiman, Daniel Hardy, Tom Hayden, Phoebe Hirsch, Arthur Hochberg, Anne Hodges, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Sam Karp, David Klafter, Dianne Kohn, Peter Kuttner, Bradford Lang, Stephen Lang, Karen Latimer, Jonathan Lerner, Naomi Lev, Bradford Long, Alan Maki, Eric Mann, Howard Machtinger, Carol McDermott, L.R. Meadows, Lisa Meisel, Jeff Melish, James Mellen, David Millstone, Russell Neufeld, Diana Oughton, John Pilkington, Edward Purtz, Jonah Raskin, Natalie Rosenstein, Dennis Roskamp, Mark Rudd, Karen Selin, Mark Shapiro, Janet Snider, Mike Spiegel, Jane Spiegelman, Marsha Steinberg, David Sole, Susan Stern, Clayton Van Lydegraf, Cathy Wilkerson and Mary Wozniak[5].

According to a federal indictment, a smaller group, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Linda Evans, Eric Mann, Howard Machtinger, Diana Oughton and Mark Rudd, met secretly in Flint on December 30, 1969 at the Parish House of Sacred Heart Convent to set up a central committee. It was modeled after Lenin’s democratic centralism. The Weather central committte was to direct underground bombings nationwide from New York, Chicago, Detroit and Berkeley aimed at police, military, university and commercial targets. There was also talk of assassinations. The Liberation News Service reported, “Part of armed struggle, as Dohrn and others laid it down, is terrorism. Political assassination… and… violence…were put forward as legitimate forms of armed struggle.[6].”

Eric Mann, soon became an SDS defector and a Flint Police informant. He reported a man dressed as a priest distributing 200 sticks of dynamite in the parking lot to drivers of cars with license plates from New York, Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, including Theodore Gold, New York[7].

Maoist

In 1975 Mann joined the Chicano-led August 29th Movement (ATM).[8] ATM merged with Chinese-American organization I Wor Kuen (IWK) and the Black Revolutionary Communist League to form the multi-racial, multi-national League of Revolutionary Struggle in 1978.[9]

Mann worked on automobile assembly lines as an active member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and ‘transformative organizer’ from 1978 to 1986, moving from the Ford assembly plant in Milpitas, California, to the General Motors assembly plant in South Gate, Los Angeles, California, to the General Motors plant in Van Nuys.

With plants facing imminent closings, Mann, with Mark Masaoka, and UAW Local 645 president Pete Beltran initiated a coalition between labor, the community and the Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open, which Mann chaired for ten years.[10] Five thousand workers (50 percent Latino, 15 percent black, and 15 percent women) built the coalition in Black and Latino communities, where the members lived.[11] Threatened with a boycott, GM kept the plant open for ten years. Reverend Frank Higgins, Sr. described the negotiation of the labor/community coalition with GM president F. James McDonald, “For the first time they have seen a coalition form in this nation that would make them come to the table. They didn’t come to bargain; they came to deal with us as though we were children. They wound up leaving knowing they had a tiger by the tail!”[12]

While at GM, Mann was active in the New Directions Movement, a national UAW reform group founded by Jerry Tucker in 1986.[13] New Directions aimed for a more democratic union and opposed the UAW’s collaboration with Ford, GM and Chrysler, its support of anti-Japanese protectionism and its support of “labor-management cooperation”.[14][15]

Rainbow

Eric Mann, a member of the ATM and later LRS, was a state-wide organizer for the Jesse Jackson for President Campaign in 1984 and 1988.[16]

Los Angeles DSA meeting

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On July 14 circa 1990 Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America and the American Solidarity Movement convened a meeting at the Workmen's Circle West Los Angeles "Progressives Stratiegies for the Labor Movement"

Panelists:

Resist Prop 187

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Freedom Road Socialist Organization's Forward Motion published an article in their January 1995 issue from Lisa Duran, Bill Gallegos, Eric Mann, and Glenn Omatsu "Prop 187 - where do we go from here?"

War Times

In January 2002, a group of San Francisco leftists, mainly involved with STORM or Committees of Correspondence, founded a national anti-Iraq War newspaper[18] War Times.

Endorsers of the project included Eric Mann, executive director, Labor Community Strategy Center.

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

In 2008 Eric Mann, Director of Labor Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles, CA signed a statement circulated by the Partisan Defense Committee calling for the release of convicted “cop-killer” Mumia Abu-Jamal.[19]

Letter to Obama

In March 2009 dozens of 'human rights groups' and activists in the United States, signed a statement urging President Barack Obama to rethink his decision to boycott the United Nations-sponsored anti-racism conference.

As you know, the Durban Review Conference is one of the most important international platforms for discussing the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances. Given the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States, your Administration has much to contribute to this discussion. A boycott would be inconsistent with your policy of engagement with the international community…

Individual signers of the statement included Eric Mann, author of Dispatches from Durban: The World Conference Against Racism and Post-September 11 Movement Strategies.[20]

US Social Forum 2010

As the “Tea Party” Right rises in U.S. politics and the U.S. Empire continues to reach around the globe, there is an urgent need to build a new left that roots a creative, explicit, anti-racist, anti-imperialist politics inside working-class communities of color. In this session, Ai-jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Steve Williams (POWER), Cindy Wiesner (Grassroots Global Justice), Ng’ethe Maina (Social Justice Leadership), and Patrisse Cullors and Eric Mann (Labor/Community Strategy Center) will engage Mann's new pamphlet, The 7 Components of Transformative Organizing Theory, which identifies 7 core elements of social movement building that have powered grassroots organizations on their way to winning historic struggles against slavery, war, apartheid and empire. The 7 Components of Transformative Organizing Theory is a companion to Mann’s forthcoming book, The 21 Qualities of the Successful Organizing: A Journey in Transformative Organizing (Beacon, 2011). [21]

Left Forum 2011

Left Forum 2011 took place March 18 - 20 at Pace University, New York City. The theme for the conference is "Towards a Politics of Solidarity".

Surviving the Crisis and Transforming Society: was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Panellists were;

Transformative Organizing: The Ultimate Solidarity:

Case Studies of Successful Multiracial Campaigns Rooted in the Working Class:

Left Forum 2013

Fight for the Soul of the Cities: An International Vision for Urban Organizing Sponsored by: AhoraNow Participants:

Black voters

Aired on November 04 , 2014, Eric Mann holds a conversation with Phillip Agnew of Dream Defenders and Gihan Perera of New Florida Majority to discuss the political state of people of color as it relates to the election process. Some of the topics discussed are, voter suppression tactics and laws that are and have been pushed through legislation by right wing agents, black and brown unity, and building a united front against the extreme right.[22]

Ear to the Ground Project

Ear to the Ground Project;

We would like to express our deep respect and appreciation for everyone who took the time to talk with us, and the organizations that generously hosted us during our travels. Interviews were confidential, but the following people have agreed to have their names listed for this publication:

Most of those listed were connected to Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Eric Mann was among those on the list. [23]

Kopkind Colony

The Kopkind Colony Program Advisory Committee, as of 2015;[24] The Kopkind Colony Honorary Board, as of 2015;[25] Angela Ards, Fred Azcarate, Jennifer Berkshire, Pamela Bridgewater, Francis Calpotura, Margaret Cerullo, Tim Costello, Kim Diehl, Heidi Dorow, Scott Douglas, Theo Emery, Laura Flanders, Ku‘umeaaloha Gomes, Joe Grabarz, Jennifer Gordon, Pronita Gupta, Muna Hamzeh, Amber Hollibaugh, Mary Howell, Janine Jackson, Si Kahn, Robin D. G. Kelley, KipuKai Kuali‘i, Brad Lander, Eric Mann, Nikki Morse, Scot Nakagawa, Debbie Nathan, Amy Newell, Rev. James Orange, Robert Pollin, Verandah Porche, Luis Rodriguez, Deb Schwartz, Barbara Smith, Makani Themba-Nixon, Jerry Tucker

Organizing Upgrade Bloggers

As of December 23, 2017, Bloggers on the Organizing Upgrade website were;

References

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  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ to Interview Questions For Reimagining Society ProjectBy Eric Mann December 17, 2009
  3. ↑ Resisting plant shutdowns, s Lynd, 1989
  4. ↑ Harvard Crimson, Mann, Weathermen Released After Arrests for Disruptions By Jeff Magalif, October 30, 1969
  5. ↑ Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, The Weather Underground, Committee Print, January 1975, 126-7
  6. ↑ Liberation News Service cited in “The Weather Underground Organization,” Information Digest, Vol. XIV, #22, November 13, 1981, 340
  7. ↑ Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, The Weather Underground, Committee Print, January 1975, 22.
  8. ↑ Template:Cite book
  9. ↑ Template:Cite book
  10. ↑ Template:Cite book
  11. ↑ Template:Cite journal
  12. ↑ Template:Cite AV media
  13. ↑ Template:Cite journal
  14. ↑ Template:Cite journal
  15. ↑ Template:Cite journal
  16. ↑ Left Coast Forum August 2018 The Strategy Center’s Free Public Transportation/Stop MTA Attacks on Black Riders Campaign—a strategic struggle and a model for U.S. organizing
  17. ↑ Undated meeting flyer
  18. ↑ WAR TIMES January 29, 2002
  19. ↑ Signers of Campaign to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Now
  20. ↑ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074695.html
  21. ↑ US Social Forum program
  22. ↑ from the frontline
  23. ↑ Ear to the Ground, About, accessed Nov. 12, 2015
  24. ↑ Kopkind board, 2015
  25. ↑ Kopkind board, 2015
  26. ↑ [2]
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