> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> I feel for you and them, but nobody has remarked on the
> dilemma of a movement that is not able to garner credit
> for what it does, or whose efforts inherently lend
> themselves to others gaining and using the leverage
> they may create.
>
> That's anarchism. It's implied vacuum in collective
> decision-making is readily filled by others, for good
> or for ill.
>
> mbs
It's not a phenomenon stemming from anarchism, Max. Most of the people and organizations on the frontlines in Seattle were not anarchists,. Far from it. They are extremely disciplined and well-organized dissidents, experienced voices against global capitalism, against neoliberal politics, against the wheeler-dealer NGOs who have sold them down the river again and again. There's a big and critical difference. These people face a choice every day: move to DC and "watch the watchers" or fight the battles on the frontlines, in forests, in factories, in farm fields, on street corners, where the shit is hitting the fan. So now, for once, they are beginning to fight back, collectively, and are met with a kind of whining Rodney King rap from the likes of Nichols, Newman, and Ritchie: "Can't we all just get along?" Sniff. Sniff. Hell, no. Of course, not.
The first real shots will be fired at the very institutions which have undermined these groups in the past--the recent past. They have to be. Power must shift and not, as Doug suggests, incrementally, through the microscopic reforms of calcified and corrupt institutions. But dramatically, as cataclysmically as the seven days on Elliot Bay. (I don't see this happening soon for a lot of reasons.) But when people form human chains around AFL HQ and the Sierra Club's offices, as they did around the Paramount Theater and the Convention Center, and when the Circle A crowd attacks the plush redoubts of NRDC and the Teamsters as they did Niketown and Starbucks, is the day when we will all know that a new movement of a revolutionary pedigree has been unleashed.
And in fact the popular forces in Seattle did garner credit for a change and it's pathetic to watch the entrenched power brokers, so fattened by decades of political inertia, lumber to catch up, in a kind of me-too rear guard action. That being said, I'm glad the anarchists were there, adding their special blend of chaos to the vertigo effect of the event.
If you don't think there was collective decisionmaking going on amongst the DA crowd you're as clueless as George Bush at the checkout counter. (As Dylan said: "there's something happening, but you don't know what it is....do you? Mister Jones...")
It's an old story: Big labor and Big greens have leverage because they are useful to those in power and are willing to prostitute themselves for a pittance, e.g., the addled John Sweeney's embarrassing performance at the child-labor photo-op with Clinton, the quashing of a Direct Action contingent in Seattle, the AFL's letter to Clinton on the labor standards working group, the pre-WTO endorsement of Al Gore... --jsc