This is not a new issue, and it gets argued out over and over every time someone occupies an intersection or a revolving door.
It depends on the context. If it were a new issue, if we were just starting out trying to do the work of education, if it were something people hadn't thought about, then this kind of action might well just turn people off.
I personally don't think we are in that kind of time. If you go out and block a tunnel over the issue of the impending war on Iraq, it's not as if it's something people haven't thought about. I think that there is already a vast amount of anti-war sentiment out there, we are very clearly at a crisis point, and the point now is to mobilize that sentiment using a variety of means. At a time like this, it is well worth sending the message that if we go ahead with this war, there will be costs and disruptions, and that disruption and direct action are appropriate and necessary.
PARTICULARLY since they have suspended the First Amendment and outlawed non- violent protest marches in New York.
Of course the art of it is to do this kind of thing in ways, with numbers, composition, etc., that connect you with the masses, not unnecessarily isolating yourselves from them.
Lou Paulsen