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.Not sur-prisingly, many Blacks, particularly the older population, seek to cling tothe past.This was evident in the 2001 mayoral race between AntonioVillaraigosa and James Hahn.Villaraigosa, a pro-labor Democrat with a longhistory of multiracial involvement and coalition building, lost to Hahn, amainstream Democrat.James Hahn, the son of the legendary Kenneth Hahn,a white Los Angeles politician famous for his antiracist politics, captured theolder Black vote by appealing to his father s legacy.The fact that so manyAfrican Americans would vote for the candidate who seemingly did not bestrepresent their interests James Hahn s record is weak at best suggeststheir anxiety about the future.24Los Angeles, like many other places, is in dire need of a politics and lead-ership that marginalized low-income residents, immigrants, and communi-ties of color can mobilize around.This is a challenge, particularly in light ofrecent immigration, which has been so vast and concentrated that peoplehave not had adequate time to adjust and learn each other s stories.Withoutsuch an incorporation process, immigrant bashing becomes more likely, asdoes the possibility of immigrants embracing a national racial order thatdenigrates African Americans.In many ways, this is one of the great chal-lenges facing the United States: How will the racial formation be reconfig-ured by vast numbers of nonwhite immigrants? Developing a commonframework is not easy because progressive political visions and movementsdon t just  happen. Rather, they are cultivated by efforts at both the grass-roots and leadership levels to bring diverse communities together and toarticulate sufficiently broad identities so that various groups can supportTHE THI RD WORLD LEFT TODAY / 227each other without feeling threatened.But just as Los Angeles offers manychallenges to the development of a broad-based movement for social justice,it offers many possibilities.If Los Angeles is able to forge such a movement,particularly one involving recent Asian and Latina/o immigrants, it couldmake a real impact on the city and serve as a model for other places.One crucial aspect of the dynamics shaping Los Angeles is globalization.Globalization, the growing integration of capital, commodities, and peopleacross the world, has become a major concern over the past decade, as it pre-sents both challenges and opportunities.For the most part, we have seen arace to the bottom, as many places seek to attract capital by offering condi-tions that maximize profits.Yet we have also seen moments when pressureis applied to bring the wages, working conditions, and legal rights of impov-erished and oppressive countries up to the standards of more prosperousones.25 Many observers treat globalization as an unprecedented shift usher-ing in a new historical era.They are both right and wrong.Although a newround of globalization may be occurring, globalization itself is hardly new.Equally profound moments of globalization occurred, for example, in 1492,or when the first shipment of African slaves arrived in the United States.Inaddition to such historical caveats, we must consider the geographicaldimensions of globalization: globalization plays out differently across space.And given that Los Angeles is considered a  global city, with elements ofboth the  First World and the  Third World, it has a distinctive charac-ter.26 For instance, in Los Angeles, as in many other  First World cities,labor activists must contend with industries threatening to relocate to LatinAmerica and Asia, while at the same time activists are incorporating newpopulations like Mixtec immigrants into their organizing work, as largeparcels of the Los Angeles landscape and economy belong to the  ThirdWorld. Thus in many ways globalization has created a new framework foractivism that differs markedly from that of the 1960s and 1970s.Despite theunprecedented circumstances, however, there are continuities with the past,and most importantly, lessons to be learned [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]