> If we try for a permit, and they deny it, then of course we march anyway.
> We can't let them take away our rights. And people will confront the
> police, go into the streets, etc. That's a righteous **defensive**
> struggle.
Seeking a permit is consent to the idea that the police have a right to determine where and when you exercise your rights. For me, if you aren't fighting for these basic rights at every protest, then you shouldn't bother with the bigger issues.
You are wrong when you say that people will march anyway and will get into the streets. I've seen activists with your group work with the cops to keep activists on sidewalks. In my experience, activists who participate in the permit process create a situation where people are afraid to get out in the street, because they've been sensitized to the issue.
> If we just say "we won't get a permit because we hate you", we are in
> essence trying to wage an **offensive** struggle against the police over a
> side issue, and then a lot of people among our own participants will be
> arguing about permit-getting instead of important stuff.
Your group, the WWP, plays footsie with the cops at every fucking large protest. You elevate this side issue to the biggest one, thus damaging the work activists are doing in trying to get their message out. The WWP and it's front groups have time and time again fucked up large mobilizations by putting permits and the police on center stage, instead of the issues.
I haven't even begun to talk about how the permit process is a way in which the cops collect intelligence on activists.
> Don't you think that there will be plenty of struggle coming out of the
> state trying to take away our rights without us having to manufacture
> occasions?
What?
> As for 'they can't do anything if there are a lot of people', WHAT? There
> were a lot of people in Chicago in 1968. There were a lot of people in NYC
> yesterday and they arrested 400 people and beat people. I decline to be as
> TRUSTING of the police to be as wise, kind to children, calculating,
> non-violent, etc., as you are. They are planning to murder hundreds of
> thousands of people in Iraq without fear of negative publicity, and you
> think they won't beat people up for fear of negative publicity!!! Where is
> the negative publicity about the people they DID beat up yesterday?
You are talking about the police in a few, very violent, jurisdictions. In many places, people have been able to take to the streets when we've outnumbered the cops. We've done that here on several occasions (most notably an ACT-UP march).
Protests are dangerous spaces. We shouldn't give anybody the false illusion that we can do things to ensure a protest is going to be "safe." What I see are left sectarians who invent excuses to only do "safe" protests, so their damn leaders never have to risk anything. We need fewer protests that are conducive to paper hawking, hours of speakers, tabling, and party recruitment.
But I'm wasting my time with this argument, because most of the activists seem to agree with me these days.
Chuck0
------------------------------------------------------------ Personal homepage -> http://chuck.mahost.org/ Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/
"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free..." ---Utah Phillips