The realities of what a southern strategy represents.....

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A Bottom-up Southern Strategy for Power in the 21st Century
the path to freedom & liberation is through the South
......... by Jerome Scott et al February 27, 2005

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Whichever party represents the most reactionary section of the ruling class at any given historical moment tells us which party is going to have a southern strategy. From the end of the Civil War to the modern Civil Rights Movement, the ruling class carried out its southern strategy most often through the reactionary southern wing of the Democratic Party. With the end of Jim Crow and the defection of the "solid South" reactionary Democrats - the Dixiecrats - to the Republican Party, that party today is clearly the Republicans.

In the final analysis though, the ruling class' southern strategy is about maintaining power. And sometimes this includes winning elections and sometimes it does not.

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Today our movement is challenged to learn <from> these lessons of our history and struggles and to chart a path to a victory that we can win and hold onto. We think there are two key lessons for this moment - "how we build our movement" and "why it's possible to build our movement and win."

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<link> http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=7322