[lbo-talk] A Calculated Provocation

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 19 16:27:52 PDT 2004


Chuck0 wrote:


>I'm talking about the fact that a mass organization did not plan
>Seattle. Seattle was the culmination of work done by many groups,
>organizations, movements, networks, and individuals. It was not led
>by some big mass organization that leftists are always telling us
>that we must create before we can do anything.

To say you need organization isn't to say you need The Organization - it's certainly not what I meant. But "Seattle" was a weeklong demo in a small city involving several thousand people. Challenging the pig system is going to take a lot more than that, on an enormous, coordinated scale.


>Why were the police in Seattle so incompetent? I argue that they
>didn't prepare because they, like many police departments, didn't
>take activists and protests seriously.

Now they do. 1200 hapless cops in Seattle are nothing next to the 40,000 of the NYPD, not to mention the millions the U.S. state could mobilize if it felt threatened.

Doug



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