>I don't want to be the dour voice of pessimism here, but, so what?
>And, what significant victory?
hmm. i see that i've been pounding my head on a steel wall again.
that people could organize something like this. that people felt a sense of efficacy. that people acted together and that they've largely done so with no vast machinelike organization. that people found out that it's not just their little group working in adelaide but hundreds of groups all over the country. most of these have been organized *entirely* thru new media technologies (and historically that matters b/c there is an argument that significant political change is a preceded by technological revolution in media.
if you have never organized with your mates, informally and for a purpose (to fight something you find unjust), then you do not understand really, what it means to accomplish these things and what getting together with other like-minded people means.
it's not necessarily about what you want it to be about.
these large gatherings are important to the people who organize and participate in them and *learn* from them, as well as those of us who participate on the peripheries and now can be a small part of it because of new mediums. important because we know that there are many many more people out there who care, who aren't apathetic, who share similar visions.
they're important because people who have often felt that it is impossible to do anything about big lumbering governments or about people that are so vastly powerful that they don't care now feel that maybe they *can* do something.
>Disrupting conventions is hogwash, change the politicians to bring about
>real change.
most of these folks, like me, don't buy into conventional politics as usual. and, moreover, they see these large political-economic structures as not at all responsive to politicians. these are trans-national organizations and national politics such that you advocate do not matter. so, if they are going to be fought it is not likely that they are going to be fought on the turf that anyone is familiar with. this movement--worldwide, well-organized, building steam, connected by new media technologies in which we can fight the mass media with our own media--this movement is forging the new political ground that we likely need to challenge political structures which themselves are already beyond conventional politics as usual.
have you been paying attention? are these bodies that people are protesting even responsive to politics as usual? are politicians now especially responsive to politics as usual if you don't have to big bucks to do all the right lobby and nab all the right ears and line the right pockets and jerk the right dicks in all the right ways. why should anyone reduce themselves to behaving like any old friggin lobby? why should we toss our dignity out the window and suck ass in the halls of congress?
who exactly should anyone vote for? are there politicians who give a crap
there are few that, until last november, even paid attention.
and then there are people, average ordinary people who read the paper. they might not have every paid much attention were it not for these protests. they might not have bothered to have learned more. it is true that antics that you might not appreciate may drive you to respond with disgust, thinking they are all a bunch of idiot kids with too many piercings.
that's a chance we take.
i suspect however that the people who hate them now would have hated them no matter what they'd done and what they'd looked like or how they'd behaved.
sometimes, people just don't like anything that isn't normal politics as usual.
the fact is, some people would never be swayed much anyway, no matter what we do.
but there are others who haven't dug in their heels and decided to reject it all out of hand. there are others for whom something like this brings them in to political life, when they hadn't been before.
a little historical perspective would probably help, some research on social movements in the past, some investigation into the role of symbolic politics, and so forth. because, hey! the brits didn't think much of the "rebels" in the colonies either--as the story goes we were the rag tag disorganized bunch of goofs who thru tea in the harbor and engaged in other similar symbolic acts that didn't accomplish much at all. but what they accomp.ished is that they are now part of the repetoire of stories we tell about how "rebellious" and "democratic" we all are.
when new york state decided to plant a radioactive waste dump, they chose where to put them on the basis of how politically complacent they thought the communities were. they also looked for the most economically depressed, figuring that they could *buy* ppl by trading a nuke dump for fancy schools, recreation centers, tax breaks. they did not calculate placement on anything scientific--like geological soundness--nor did they consider that the areas they chose were primary producers of dairy products, grain and fruit that fed the rest of the state.
they were counting on apathy. they were counting on the lack of political organization. they were counting on wants and desires born of economic deprivation. they were counting, most especially, on not just ignorance but stupidity and, thus, on manipulability.
they got none of that.
in fact they faced people who were fairly well organized because of their very rural backwardness. they faced people who, because of years of economic hardship, had learned to live without it and to rely on informal mechanisms in civil society to help each other through the hard times. they faced people who, when they came up against the faceless bureaucrat and the parroting politician, got angry. they faced people who got even angrier to learn that what they saw as a source of pride--their hard work in sometimes backbreaking labor on farms and in factories--was seen by "city slickers" as indicators of their likely apathy, ignorance and stupidity.
they got people who, while they hadn't been especially politically involved, were willing now. they found people who were not only willing to raise a ruckus, but people who blocked the siting commissions access and were willing to do so in the face of guns: farmers, church ladies, long time political activists, only commies from the 60s movement, hippies that had holed up in "communes", housewives, real estate ppl, college professors. they got people who did the same in the state capital where they disrupted meetings. and so forth.
they also faced people who did the nitty gritty "politics as usual": writing letters, licking envelopes, knocking on doors, distributing fliers, making persuasive arguments at the siting commission meetings, undertaking fund raising drives, educating themselves about other fights against nuke dump sitings, learning about geology and constitutional law.
but it mattered to periodically get together and show our force, to show our collective face, to show them that we could be organized and could possibly be a formidable force, that it wasn't just the hardcore activists, but people from all over the community who weren't going to put up with it.
so the parades and the crazy outfits and the candlelight vigils and the people dressed as radioactivated mutant dairy cows and the farmers on their tractors and the kids in marching bands--all of that became an important symbolic gathering that energized people. it sent a message to the politicians that, when they came to town to engage in politics as usual, that there were a bunch of people who were ready to do something more than that. and whether those pols took them seriously or not, it didn't matter. what mattered was the sense of pride, efficacy, and solidarity that was generated by the gatherings. because politics as usual is boring, hard work and it gets lonely.
social movements need things like this.
kelley