Great Cockburn/St. Clair piece on Seattle

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Dec 15 09:32:31 PST 1999


At 10:23 AM 12/15/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair have an excellent column in
>>NY Press this week -- "Who Won in Seattle? -- about the attempt of
>>liberal "respectable demonstrators" to swipe credit for the success
>>of the anti-WTO protests from the "pernicious rabble" who did the
>>heavy lifting and actually did achieve that stunning success.
>>Unfortunately, the article is not available on NY Press's web site.
>>I have no idea how those outside NYC can get this piece.

Unfortunately, it is Cockburn and St.Clar who create mythology. Contrary to the mythology of companeros fighting a valiant struggle against the evil in depths of the jungle, or a bunch of uncompromising Trots fomenting a world revolution in the privacy of their West-Side apartments, radicals alone has never succeeded (cf. William Gamson's analysis of social movements in the us _the strategy of social protest_) - a social movement is successful only when it is coopted to the mainstream institutions.

On the other hand, moderates are seldom coopeted without radicals, for only the radical threat forces the elites to look at the moderates as an acceptable alternative. There would be no Martin Luther King without Black Panthers or Malcolm X, and there would be no "liberal" success in Seattle without radicals and anarchists.

In short - radicals, moderates, and yes, some members of the establishment who created a 'window of opportunity' (cf. Charles Tilly, _From Mobilization to Revolution_) acting together achieved the victory. Each of them acting apart would be ignored and dismissed quite easily.

wojtek


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