slogans

[Chris Burford]

At 28/01/02 22:20 -0800, you wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> > Personally I incline to the belief that the most creative thing protesters
> > could have done was skip this meeting without making a statement and hit
> > the next one.
>
>I know what you mean, but I can't help but think that the time for
>standing down has passed (or maybe I'm just getting theological in my old
>age). The global Left has got to show some maturity, and move from being
>against things (defense) to offense, and the Big Apple is the perfect
>place to do it. It's a city which has suffered 25 years of nightmarish
>neoliberalism, and then a godawful crime against humanity, and yet it's
>also a place of wondrous diversity, creativity, and the home of some of
>the nicest people I know. It's time for a militance which is also a
>healing, a resistance which is also a rebuilding, and the righteous anger
>of a global justice which makes amends for what has been done in the past.
>Ground Zero is the canary in the global mine: the telos of unfettered
>capitalism is total destruction, because when shareholder value is
>everything, human life becomes nothing. Whatever happens out there in the
>streets has to be global theater, the worthy successor to Genoa,
>world-class theater for a world-class city.
>
>-- Dennis

All demonstrations are in a sense theater. They need to be good theater. 
Yes there will be riff raff alongside but it is visual messages that 
communicate fastest now.

Secondly the demonstration must be authoritative. The radicals must not 
just endlessly protest: their demands must imply that if the system cannot 
deliver, it should be taken over by people who can deliver.

It is not very important how much the chosen members of the inteligentsia 
are paid who are to run the global economy: what matters are the parameters 
against which they run it.

Chris Burford