Does WWP "stifle" direct action?

Lou Paulsen wwchi at enteract.com
Wed Oct 31 20:33:28 PST 2001


-----Original Message----- From: Chuck0 <chuck at tao.ca>
>Gee, then you are saying that I shouldn't believe my eyes? I've been to
>a few IAC/WWP demos over the years and I haven't see one that engaged in
>militant action. I've heard that IAC/WWP events in other cities are
>routinely described as "boring."

Well, how about this one?

http://www.iacenter.org/libbell.htm

I notice that it's linked from this webpage which YOU designed :-)

http://burn.ucsd.edu/~mai/gulag/mumia_news.html

As for the DC business, I wasn't in DC and I'm sure it was a difficult time for everyone, but really, in this sentence:

"After months of courting us, the IAC decided the week before the actions that they wanted to have nothing to do with us."

Doesn't this sort of skim over the fact that, starting two and a half weeks before the actions, several important things happened: the Sept. 11 attacks occurred; the IMF decided not to meet; the vast majority of the anti-globalization forces which had been planning to come to S29 decided not to come at all; the IAC decided to proceed with S29 as an anti-war action; numerous forces in the movement condemned the IAC's decision as insensitive, adventurist, and so on. In other words, both the IAC and the ACC were in an entirely new situation, not the situation they had expected to be in. Correct me if I'm misstating things, but you seem to be implying that basically everything should have gone on just as if September 11 hadn't happened, even though the numbers, the context, the public mood, the legal situation, in short everything were now quite different.

lp



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