Joanna
Fed. of Fortune 500 Killers wrote:
>STATEMENT FROM THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION
>OF FORTUNE 500 KILLERS
>ON POINTLESS NO-RNC PROTESTS
>---
>
>Next week, an estimated 250,000 people will "descend,"
>as its organizers hyperbolically term it, into New
>York City to protest the Republican National
>Convention. The Glorious Revolutionary Federation of
>Fortune 500
>Killers has minimal interest in the convention protest
>and wishes to outline its reasoning below.
>
>First, New York City will be the equivalent of a
>police state during the Republican National
>Convention. The NYPD, police forces from other
>cities, and illegally placed military police more or
>less have all areas covered and will dispose of any
>meaningful protest promptly and violently. Therefore,
>we see the protests against the Republican National
>Convention as nothing more than a self-congratulating
>exercises in dramaturgy without much surprise or shock
>to "the enemy" -- the whole raison d'etre behind
>creative disruption
>and civil disobedience. In fact, rather than urge
>protestors to creatively attack the convention in
>unplanned and spontaenous ways, the imbecilic
>organizers have instead been spending excessive
>amounts of money and time filing permits, and then
>filing appeals for denied permits. What
>self-respecting protestors, we ask, request permission
>to protest?
>
>Some have argued that our view represents defeatism
>and capitulation to the growing jackboot police state
>in this country. On the contrary, an effective
>protest against what the Republican (and Democratic)
>National
>Conventions represent could have been mounted with
>some more thought. But the anti-RNC protestors have
>been beyond idiotic in their planning. Much planning
>and debate over anti-RNC actions has been conducted
>over an OPEN E-MAIL LIST almost certainly surveilled
>by law enforcement. Only the most moronic of soldiers
>hand the enemy their battle plans before marching into
>war.
>
>The so-called organizers of the anti-RNC protests have
>poured much wasted energy into their events without
>much thought of what happens after the convention and
>how any momentum from the protest might be sustained
>over a long period or at least through Election Day.
>Successful social movements are victorious because of
>small day-to-day actions that keep the ruling
>class on their toes and scared -- not one huge
>ejaculatory wad of political self-congratulation for
>one Republican National
>
>Convention. Such small but PERSISTENT day-to-day
>actions, chronicled in excellent recent books on the
>"Mississippi organizing tradition" by John
>Dittmer and Charles Payne, were the foundations of the
>modern Civil Rights Movement. And they are utterly
>missing from this wave of protests.
>
>After the "successful" anti-war marches a year ago, is
>the notion of perpetual war or the doctrine of
>pre-emptive war looked at with revulsion by
>those in political power? The policies of Kerry and
>Bush seem to say No. After the "successful" march for
>women's choice in Spring, is abortion under
>any less threat? No. Incidentally, at that march,
>many Democratic apologists took the stage to extol how
>great things were in the Clinton Administration, even
>though abortions were as inaccessible to women in the
>overwhelming majority of United States counties back
>then as now. These events are attracting massive
>attendance, yet so few results.
>
>The RNC protest reinfores "Anybody But Bush" ideology
>and is excessively personality-centered on Mister
>Bush. This perpetuates a reverse "Great Man" reading
>of history and fails to focus on the long-standing
>systematic and structural characteristics -- our
>permanent war economy, our bloated military spending,
>our steadily rising (since the 1970s) economic
>inequality -- that allow terrible policies and
>decisions to be made. Bush is a putrid SYMPTOM of a
>sick military-industrial SYSTEM that has existed since
>World War II, not the CAUSE of that sickness. If Bush
>is gone, the sick SYSTEM remains.
>
>Protestors seem to believe that another 1999 Seattle
>WTO protest -- a genuinely successful protest that
>scared the ruling class and took them by
>complete surprise -- will occur. They employ the same
>(by now boring) tactics over and over again.
>
>The Federation says it is time for the freakshow
>puppeteering and morbidly celebratory nature of these
>protests to end. Civilians are dying in Iraq,
>you idiots. This is not time to goof off and have
>"fun." You are not changing the world by dressing up
>in a coat, hat, and clown-makeup while acting like an
>annoying weirdo for the sake of it.
>
>The quality of the anti-RNC activities appears to be
>of abominable intellectual caliber. Back in the early
>1960s, groups like the Student Non-Violent
>Coordinating Committee (SNCC) coupled their direct
>action with
>thoughtful and incivisive writing, such as their
>famous pamphlet that documented health care inequality
>in black Mississippians with rigorously researched
>data. Here is a sampling, however, of what you shall
>see from today's pale non-imitation:
>
> "The Neo-cons are coming. Get ur freak on at
>the...
> (NEO-CON)ey Island Block Party and Fashion
>Show
> Havemeyer Street, Williamsburg
> Between Metropolitan Ave and Hope Street"
>
>And:
> "A night of political cabaret, activist
>tabling and all-outrave is how the East Village and
>Lower East Side will welcome the Republican National
>Convention to New York. "
>
>As one astute observer puts it, there exists a big
>chasm between a protest
>and a party draped in trite political veneer.
>
>Reading such, one literally cannot do anything but
>stare at the screen in
>nauseous awe for a few seconds.
>
>The Federation wonders what might have happened had
>these protestors organized around substantive issues
>of actual day-to-day social meaning tothe poor and
>non-white populations who are conspicuously absent
>from most of these protests and "nights of political
>cabaret," "(NEO-CON)ey Island Block Parties and
>Fashion Shows," and "all-out raves." Smaller but
>persistent
>protests around the country at poorly managed county
>hospitals and private insurance companies might
>actually force the issue of national health
>program onto a more prominent stage. Using issues
>like health care as a lens, protestors could have
>mounted broader criticisms of the system that breeds
>such ills. What is needed are practical campaigns
>centered around
>such issues, and furthermore, solidarity among such
>issue-based campaigns so that people understand how
>segregated and poor housing is connected to the
>HIV/AIDS epidemic, which in turn is connected to our
>abhorrent drug policies.
>
>But puppets, and poetry "slams" -- slam! -- and clown
>makeup, and the same old banalities since 1999 reign
>instead.
>
>
>
>
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