Right. But who's deliberately planning a boring rally? It's a symptom. I'm for brief rallies, with some real action (like, why don't we all just all go visit the State Attorney in his office now?) and when I'm on a rally committee that's what I work for. But if you've ever been on a rally committee, you know how it goes--people are representative of some constituency, they're a big name draw, they're a politician someone's trying to publicize or curry favor with. Whatever. That's why I prefer speakouts where--after an intro--everyone's talking from their own direct experience about abortion, sexual harassment, health insurance, police abuse, whatever the issue is.
>But the undemocratic coalition style of organization means that speakers
>are parcelled out as prizes for short boring stints; the interests of the
>organizers for the spoils of media attention win out over the interests
>of the audience (or making the rallies attractive).
Sounds like an overabundance of 'democracy' to me. Rather than a real hash out of what's interesting or important, there's the coalition route, with everyone getting an equal turn. Really, we should each have 2 seconds. That would allow about 7,000 people to say nothing much. Let's face it, we go to these things because of the issue, not the speakers. I remember being appalled at the mealy-mouthed, snobby, ahistorical, even anti-feminist crap coming from the the speakers at one of those huge pro-choice rallies you keep mentioning. Did it mean I didn't go to the next one? No.
>Some feel the style as much as the statements are alien-- just so obviously
>disconnected from how their friends talk about politics. At a lot of left
>rallies, it's like a parallel universe where people speak this radical
>slang, instead of just saying the same thing in the way ordinary people
>would. It does reflect the sectarian world of a lot of the organizers
>where they DO speak like that to each other so often that they just no longer
>recognize how weird it sounds.
I'm with you there. Their audience is other 'radicals' rather than everyday Americans who, after all, are so bought off we're not really worth talking to, right?
Jenny Brown
>- -- Nathan Newman
>
>