Nathan Newman wrote:
> It's both- the focus on violence detracts from the message of the protest
> while justifying any repression.
-Liberal nonsense. This assertion has been made alot lately without anything t -back it up. If you really care about getting a message out to the public, you -have to admit that violence and militant protest is the only thing that the -corporate media will cover. I've been involved in a range of protests of late, -The media doesn't give a shit about nonviolent protests.
Even sillier anarchist nonsense. There is a long history of creative nonviolent protest and organizing geting media coverage. If nothing else, read some Saul Alinsky on how to do it. Or remember some classic ACT-UP protests. Or just the whole history of union and civil rights activism.
>You are pretty far removed from having to work shitty jobs
>under capitalism. All your talk about Zizek and Foucault aren't going to
help
<you understand the working class young person who gets fucked by Greenpeace
as a
>door-to-door canvasser.
Chuck, now you are really just playing the lefter-than-thou bullshit in a way that shows you talking out of your ass. First, I've never read Zizek so try a different target.
Second, I spent at least two years total of my life as a door-to-door canvasser and then phone canvassser, fought knock down battles as a student member of the MASSPIRG board demanding labor rights, then as a phone fundraiser (at an outfit raising funds for pro-choice, enviro groups, etc) tried to organize a union and faced a savage union-busting campaign.
>Throwing rocks at cops can quickly become attractive to
>a young person who makes a pittance begging for money so some soft NGO
flacks
>can put their feet up in their Washington office suites.
All nice for such NGO flacks-- personally, I've never made more than $5000 in a year from non-profit sources, so someone whose made full salary from non-profit sources should probably keep their mouth off such topics and stay to the issue at hand.
Cut the holier-than-thou crap.
> And one thing all the former Panthers on the panel made clear was how
> protesters lose if they give into a spiraling escalation of violence
against
> forces that have a lot more guns and repressive surveillance technology.
-I agree. But I don't see any interest in spiraling into an escalation of -violence. Yeah, rock throwing is more violent than those boring Lefty demos -we've been subjected to for all these decades, but I haven't heard anybody -talking about guns or escalating the level of violence.
Wait til the cops shoot a few people in these protests. Which they will, specifically to provoke folks into escalation and the cops will have plants to egg on the escalation. And when folks start bringing guns to the demos, are you going to hold out for the individual right to "do their own thing." Believe me, they will be using your holier-than-thou arguments against you if you do.
>Let those of us who take the streets figure this out. Why don't you give
>rank-and-file activists more credit for creating strategy? What is really
>fascinating is how many of the moderate and liberal activists have become
more
>militant after Quebec City.
As someone who's been in the streets and working with those doing mass defense, I'm part of that "rank-and-file" so my comments are all part of it. As I said, your proler-than-thou rhetoric just gets in the way of exactly the strategic discussion thats needed.
> For all the propaganda value of protests and even trials, as the
roundtable
> noted last month, the imprisonment and trials of leaders like Bobby Seale
> ended up taking them away from tending to movement building for literally
> years, even as the cops were using subtler methods to tear the movement
> apart.
-So, we should just sit on our asses, take no risks, an go back to being -marginalized? Are you suggesting that we can get rid of capitalism by holding -hands, singing Kum-bayah, and voting for the next Al Gore?
If you think rumbling in the streets by itself will bring down capitalism will bring down capitalism, you are more delusional than the 60s radicals you mentioned.
Sorry, protests are all to the good but they are just a media event that SLIGHTLY inconveniences capital. As THE ECONOMIST notes this week, global capitalism can always just pick more remote places - read Qatar - for meetings if necessary.
Real radical change requires organizing of not a few thousand street radicals but hundreds of millions of workers and families across the world. It requires unions organized globally, electoral mobilizations, consumer boycotts and a range of actions that leverage real POWER, not mere media gestures. Protests will be used to supplement that power organizing but the street protests are a tool, not the ultimate focus of power organizing.
-- Nathan Newman