Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 17:16:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Maine Militias: fascist?


On Thu, 7 Mar 1996, rakesh bhandari wrote:

> Doug, I just don't see how this follows.  It may be that people who have
> made the choice to join the Militias are the least interested, perhaps most
> hostile to radical politics, though they are of course militants (the same
> could be said of the hard-core members of the *Nation of Islam*). Who is
> throwing in the towel about the American working class?  Is the Militia the
> working class?  What does most of the working class think of them?  
> 

Clanging on a trash-can lid to kick off a Maine corn chowder potluck 
meeting this month, the featured speaker and organizer plunged into a 
fast-paced condemnation of corporate down-sizing and free trade.

"Corporations aren't there for the public good," she told the crowd of 
about 70 loggers, farmers, environmentalists and self-described 
anarchists at a schoolhouse in this town near the New Hampshire 
border. "They're there to produce more profits for the stockholders in 
the next quarter."

Patrick J. Buchanan is not the only one bringing in a message of 
economic populism to working-class New Englanders worried about 
layoffs and weakening wages.

The potluck speaker, Carolyn Chute, Maine's native-daughter novelist, 
has been organizing a grass-roots political movement on making 
corporations and government more responsive to workers. Calling her 
group the 2nd Maine Militias, Ms. Chute has attracted some of 
Maine's conservatives with her support for gun-ownership rights and 
by bashing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But the group, which Ms. Chute began last year and which is more 
gun club than militia, is appealing to conservative and liberal Mainers 
alike by opposing proposals for a flat income tax and demanding an 
end to corporation campaign contributions and tax subsidies for big 
business.

Regarding such issues as abortion and gay rights, she and her 
followers consider them distractions from the more important issues of 
jobs and government accountability to the working class.

Growing up in a blue-collar family, and experiencing poverty as a 
single parent, Ms. Chute, who is in her 40's, has long complained 
about the lack of attention given to have-nots in this country.

"Many other militias and many individuals blame gays, blacks, Jews, 
Spanish-speaking folks, welfare mums, illegal drugs, seat belts, 
schools without prayers, women with shoes, abortions, 
environmentalists, unseen Communist forces and so-called liberals," 
Ms. Chute wrote in a Dec. 24, 1995, opinion article in The Maine 
Sunday Telegram, a Portland newspaper.

"The whole of America is squabbling over these details while huge 
corporations smilingly take more than 50% off the top of the Federal 
budget for subsidies including outright handouts for researching new 
business opportunities in other countries where they can exploit 
foreign workers like the exploit us, all in the name of free enterprise 
and individual rights."

Ms Chute has gained a fierce loyalty from many rural Maine readers 
with her 1985 best-selling first novel, "The Beans of Egypt, Maine," 
and other gritty books about working-class poverty and powerlessness.

But despite Ms. Chutes popularity, her group has an uncertain future. 
No definitive plans have been made on how to achieve the group's 
goals, and no donations have been solicited. She acknowledges her 
ignorance of the political process but pushes aside suggestions that the 
group will simply fade away for lack of money and sophistication.

"We realize that our goals may take many lifetimes," she said in an 
interview at the potluck lunch. "We have to be patient. We're trying to 
educate and we're also trying to educate how powerful we can be."

(From 2/19/96 New York Times article "Hark! A Mainer Stirs 
Economic Populism")



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