> Then there's Bro. Chucky, who responds to a question
> why is Dolan "anti-labor" with:
>
> "Several of the D.C. Wobblies attended the National Press Club press
> conference back in December which featured Hoffa and a variety of other
> labor and environmental leaders. Dolan was there, in the wings, and he
> scowled at us the whole time. Mind you, it was just 3 of us, wearing a
> few Wobbly things. If anything, maybe he was worried because there were
> some folks in the room who were younger than 30. . . . "
>
> [mbs] Oh Bubby! But "anti-labor"?
>
> "Anyway, he ran into our branch secretary the next day on the street and
> asked why we thought we had a right to attend that press conference. Our
> IWW guy responded, by asking Dolan how he got off acting like the leader
> of the anti-WTO actions, when nobody in Seattle had ever heard of him."
>
> [mbs] So Anti-Wobbly = Anti-labor?
>
> With this sort of regard for precision,
> you shall not be all.
Ok, ok, maybe not the best illustration of Dolan being anti-labor, but it is a good illustration of what he thinks of young radical activists. Dolan didn't even speak at the press conference, but the way he stared at us from the sidelines would have cut some 2-inch steel plates in half. This was pretty odd, because our contingent wasn't dressed radically, nor did we get a chance to ask any questions. OK, so we weren't dressed as natty as the reporter from the Weekly Standard in the row in front of us.
I guess we were gate-crashers of a sort, because we were the youngest people in the room and represented radical labor, not business unions such as the Teamsters. We also represented a viewpoint--that many had consigned to the dustbin of history--which has no interest in which candidate gets nominated to be the Democratic choice for President. Nor do we care about third party candidates. Shit, the last third party candidate I voted for was Lenora Fulani, and we all know what a kook she is.
We certainly didn't look funny. We weren't dressed like crusty punks. I was skipping work (several blocks away) and was wearing casual clothes. The other folks were dressed like students.
But I think Dolan could read my friend Dave's mind. Dolan knew exactly the question that Dave was going to ask. Dave had been teargassed in the streets, handcuffed 4 times (never arrested), and certainly was tired of hearing how this liberal Beltway NGO appratchik, Michael Dolan, had been annointed as the "leader of the Seattle protests." Dave rode a Greyhound bus to Seattle and back. He cooked us dinner so we would contribute money so that he could go. He din't fly out there. He's also never been a campaign manager for some fuck running for L.A. mayor's seat.
Dave represents the future, one with radical labor making the demands, not some spinmeister who floats from cause to cause, and getting paid a handsome fee for coopting radicals back into the establishment.
I've enjoyed this thread so much, that I'm going to get together with some other folks and put online a webpage about Dolan.
I like what one of my fellow Wobs said to me last weekend while driving me home from the Utah Phillips concert:
"Anarchy's back, because the dustbin of history isn't big enough for us anymore."
-- Chuck0
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org/
Leonard Peltier Freedom Month Executive Clemency For Peltier! http://www.freepeltier.org/lpfreedommonth.html
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! http://www.infoshop.org/gulag/mumia_idx.html
"A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits."
- Jens Bjørneboe