> 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?
The state is resonsible for arresting them. The IAC was responsible for organizing a risky event the night before the big day of action. While they couldn't have read the minds of the authorities, this was an example of how they don't play well with others.
> 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.
This isn't the matter of a few annoying Sparts who show up at a meeting or march in a march. We are talking here about an ambitious group which engages in dirty politics at a level that is disruptive to the work of other activists.
> 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)
These groups have little popular support, but they know how to manipulate other activists into wasting their time organizing with them.
I have no fear that they will steal anybody from anybody's point of view. I just wish they'd go the fuck away.
Chuck0
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"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