April 10, 2004 --- A rally in San Francisco, at the U.N. Plaza near the City Hall, was held under the banner (literally) of "End Colonial Occupation" and "Bring the Troops Home Now." Several hundred protesters attended, and about half appeared to be with the International ANSWER coalition, who organized the event, or with groups claiming to follow a Socialist ideology. What separates MIM from these half-dozen other groups? One is our commitment to focusing on concrete realities of the world today and avoiding the idealism that has infected western culture and also taints the ideologies of most pseudo-socialist organizations.

For example, a protester distributing "The People," the newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party, approached a RAIL comrade who was handing out MIM Notes. The SLP supporter criticized the MIM line on modern-day China by arguing that if the U.S. went to war on China, the international working class should support China because all the gains of the Cultural Revolution have not been lost there is still some positives aspects to the Chinese Communist Party. While MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in humyn history [1], we also recognize that China is now a capitalist country. Its government, and any military action in which it might engage, serves the interests of the ruling class and therefore cannot be supported from the perspective of the international proletariat. MIM does not condone any imperialist wars, even those waged by countries which may still contain pockets of peasants or workers fighting for socialist revolution, such as in China or Russia.

The Socialist Labor Party was also handing out flyers to publicize their intent to become a "new third party" in the 2004 election. It read, "Does any political party -- new or old -- reflect the interests of American workers?...We believe we can." Even if the SLP was representing the American working class, it would not be representing the Third World proletariat, as MIM does. This is for the simple reason that the material interests of American workers are often contradictory to those of the international working class. While U.$. workers and labor unions are crying for an increase in wages and better health coverage, the MIM platform demands an international minimum wage and worldwide access to basic health care. A true Socialist party takes a global perspective, instead of catering to the "workers" in one particular country. We put "workers" in quote because anyone in this country who has the right to vote is probably not a "worker" in the Marxist sense of the term. The only proletariat workers in the U.$. are those immigrants who do not enjoy the privileges of citizenship. This is why trying to wage a proletarian revolution through the ballot box is impossible, and one of the reasons why MIM proclaims, "Don't vote, organize!" [2]

Due to the high proportion of sectarian groups, interest in MIM literature was limited. Although among those who were not handing out their own newspaper, MIM Notes was popular and about 100 were distributed.