>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> Chuck Munson wrote:
>>
>>> But don't get in the way of those who want to burn the convention center
>>> down.
>>
>> You've got to be kidding, Chuck. There's the immediate problem of
>> massive numbers of cops who would have shredded anyone who tried, and
>> the less immediate one of discrediting any movement that did
>> something like that. Are you really interested in a political
>> transformation, or just in getting your ya-yas out?
>
> One simply has to take into account the actuality of ultra-leftists (to
> use the politest term) as one of the conditions we face, like prisons,
> biased news reporting, or any other feature of capitalism which operates
> to repress radical or revolutionary organizing. They simply aren't going
> to go away until the conditions which generate them go away.
>
> The only effective response to them is effective organizing of struggles
> on the most advanced (and militant) basis possible at a given time and
> place.
I disagree that that's the only possible solution, though it is a good one. I've had a fair amount of luck persuading such brickthrowers of their counterproductivity by way of personal discussion away from the barricades. No one likes to be seen as a coward, and conveying just how the mass of activists see those who toss bricks from the back of the crowds, leaving the Mothers Against Whatever on the front lines to walk on the broken glass and eat billy clubs, is, I've found, an effective thought-provoker. And the half dozen or so people I've talked to aren't much compared to the mass, but who knows how few we might have to persuade to deprive those mobs of critical mass?
Given time, a few in the Black Blocs will become long-term, committed, effective radical activists who've rejected the cartoon cult bombthrower image. (The majority of their peers will likely go to work with Dad in a few years.) I was one of the brickthrowers twenty-five years ago: I'm glad a couple of old folks in their early thirties sat me down for a lesson in history, rather than consigning me to Enemy Of The People status.
-- Chris Clarke | Editor, Faultline http://www.faultline.org | California's Environmental Magazine