Undocumented migrants, new immigrants, international students, Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, the poor who can't afford expensive lawyers, parents with young children, individuals with health problems, etc. have good reason to seek to avoid possibilities of getting arrested if they can help it. I'm not from the Middle East, but I've been told (long before 9.11) by local civil liberties lawyers that what the state could do to me if I got arrested would be different from what they could do to an American-born citizen. Organizers who seek to recruit activists for civil disobedience and other actions that can get them in trouble with law should be honest about possible consequences of such actions.
Moreover, why fetishize "high-risk events"? Get yourself arrested, and you'll likely put yourself out of circulation for some time (sometimes for a long time) at least, having to go through the hassles of criminal justice system, expenses, etc. (I've seen this happen myself); you'll also likely cost your friends time, money, and energy, to serve as witnesses, etc.; and depending on your circumstances, you might get yourself deported or locked up for a long time. "High-risk events" may worth the risks sometimes, but it all depends on whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
It's not as though we were on the eve of social revolution. A couple of thousands of people getting arrested won't stop the war. Those who want to organize "high-risk events" might at least make clear what they hope to accomplish by increased risks.
At 5:33 PM -0500 2/6/03, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> > I think the idea that it's dangerous to have an internal debate on the left
>because the >right might pick up on it is thoroughly ridiculous.
>
>Obviously so.
Much of the materials on Infoshop.org aren't what we might call "an internal debate on the left": e.g., <http://www.infoshop.org/myep/myep_wwp_cops.jpg>. Besides, I recall Chuck0 has identified himself as "post-leftist," so I don't think he thinks of himself and other anarchists as belonging to the same left to which WWP also belongs. Chuck0 may still debate Lou Paulsen, but the debate won't be one internal to a left to which both belong, as there can be no such left according to Chuck0's "post-leftism."
I've seen productive debates on WWP internal to a left of sorts (such as it is) on the Solidarity and Marxmail lists among other places. On both lists, there have been sharp and even fierce criticisms of WWP's theory and practice as well as qualified evaluations of WWP's accomplishments. Believe me, such internal debates have little to do with threads on WWP on LBO-talk. If we had a sense that there was a left of sorts (such as it is) to which most here -- including Chuck0 and Lou Paulsen -- belonged, we could have "an internal debate on the left." -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
