>> Got to side with Chuck on this one, since I was down there for almost the
>> whole week preceding the DC events. The IAC of course was doing their own
>> thing, instead of working with the broad-based movement.
>
> Thanks. The IAC was totally out of the loop, if I remember correctly. Lots of
> people went to that demo because, well, they were in town for A16 and not
> much was happening the night before A16.
I still don't understand this. Whose fault was it they got arrested? The state's or IAC's? Or of the poor uncool idiots who don't know the dark shaolin arts of escaping from the police?
I am utterly amazed at the problem you Americans have at the participation of these guys in the movements. Nobody cares that the PSTU (ie. fourth internationalists) or the PC do B (semi-maoists) show up in numbers and speak at Brazilian rallies. We simply know that they aren't going to be brainwashing the rest of the country. Neither I nor the majority of people I know care when Labour party arseholes come to 'my' marches in Sydney, and we tend to welcome Liberals who break ranks. And these guys have very clear, very obvious intentions to run things for me against my interests.
And frankly, if the IAC and ANSWER actually do get millions of people over to their side of politics, and have them all go into uncool 'tame' marches, I can hardly see how that is not the choice of those same millions of people. The fear I detect in your writing is that they are 'stealing' those people from your point of view, as if they didn't have their own. I fail to see how organizing is a zero sum game. (If it was, there would be no point playing it)
Thiago
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