>Mass organization? Boring! WRONG ANSWER! Which mass organization brought
>us Seattle? There was NO mass organization that organized Seattle, in
>fact the usual suspects who preach mass organization were caught by
>surprise when Seattle happened.
What the hell are you talking about Chuck? You may not agree with how the unions acted at Seatlle but they were there. And if you think a handful of Black Bloc folks breaking windows by themselves would have been news, you are deluding yourself. It was "Teamsters and Turtles Together" that made the headlines, the two different forces getting credibility from each other through the synergy of their presence.
I fully agree with the point about continuing to dissent, but your sense of tactics just seems bizarre. You think that power can be fought without countervailing power, that somehow media circuses will make the wall fall all by itself. Mass organization by itself gets you nothing more than a crowd, but mass organization combined with action gets you mass strikes, consumer boycotts, largescale civil disobediance that fills jails beyond capacity-- real challenges to the state that are the manifestations of power.
One reason Bush is in deep shit in Iraq now is he is no longer dealing with isolated rearguard Baathists but someone like Sadr who not only had guns but a broader mass movement behind him. Whatever you think of Sadr's politics, he and his forces are exercising power and thus Bush has to deal with them. He is using violence but the reason the violence is meaningful politically is that it is backed by mass organization.
I sure as hell am against violence by mass forces in the US, but we definitely need to build power and that requires real organizing. You disdain the ballot box, so you punt on that form of power. But you don't even assert the anarchist syndicalism of mass strike unionism to force change.
You talk about action but you never give an analysis of why the action you advocate will force those with power to make concessions. Sure, ANSWER sucks even more-- marching into pens makes little sense if you alienate any potential sympathizers with stupid rhetoric; it's the worst of all worlds.
But the electoral activists you despise at least have an articulated plan, seize the state at the ballot box. What's your plan? How do you challenge existing power? What will you propose that will make them stop what they are doing, rather than just up the repression as needed?
Nathan Newman