Groundhog's Day

[Jeffrey St. Clair]

My point was twofold: a.) that there were many writers, enviro, biotech, human
rights and labor organizers,and experienced activists out on the barricades, being
maced, being pepper sprayed, being shot at at point-blank-range while they were
locked down, who know these issues intimately, and who have thought about them
deeply; and b.) the people on the streets don't have power to broker deals, the
"elites" do and they have done so in the past and they will do so in the
future--which is how they remain where they are. I have interviewed organizers of
the rally/parade who were sent a memo from their clique of funders during the
weeks before Seattle. In sum, the memo said: soften your message. Money talks,
especially in the land of the ngos. But fortunately those foundations,
incestuously tied to the DNC, weren't bankrolling the street-fighters.--jsc

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Jeffrey St. Clair wrote:
>
> >This is fairly patronizing stuff, particularly the part which
> >suggests that the
> >people on the streets couldn't figure out why they wanted to be there on their
> >own, without having digested the blizzard of pre-WTO prose poured
> >out by the elite
> >commentators.
>
> By the way, this relates to the conversation we've never had about
> the virtues of the "grassroots." There's a tendency among validators
> of the grassroots to turn conventional discourse on its head -
> instead of the elite commentators being the subjects presumed to
> know, the rank and file becomes that. Life isn't so simple. Fear of
> being patronizing shouldn't stop one from admitting that the folks on
> the street don't always know as much as we'd like them too.
> Otherwise, why be a journalist/writer at all? Presumably we have
> something to contribute from all that time we spend researching and
> thinking about things. That isn't to say we should deliver
> pronunciamenti from on high, but we shouldn't get carried away with
> false modesty either.
>
> Doug