> Chuck- This is part and parcel of your attitude on protests. Whatever a
> planning committee decides, you and your friends can ignore any democratic
> decision and break windows or do any other action you wish. You don't
> believe in democratic constraint of your actions in any form. Whatever you
> think is best is what you have the right to do.
Sorry, but this is NOT my attitude about protests. I'm flattered that people on this list have interesting opinions on what I believe, but this is just untrue.
Let me explain something to you about movement democracy. If my affinity group goes to a spokescouncil meeting and agrees to follow the parameters of the decisions made there, then we should follow those decisions as much as possible given the changing situations that happen during a protest. On the other hand, if my group never attends your planning meeting, then we are free to do whatever we want during protests. Protests happen in public places. If your group organizes a protest in Plaza X, my group is free to do whatever it wants at Intersection Y. One of the fallacies we are dealing with here is the idea that because one group organizes some protests, that they get to call the shots for the entire city that day.
Movement democracy involves a give and take between working with others and making decisions within your group.
Let me burst another stereotype about anarchists at protests. We anarchists are pretty big into movement democracy and group transparency. In fact, we are far more democratic than the old left groups which organize protests. Anarchists organize most of those spokescouncils that happen at big summit convergences. We engage in lots of coalition-building with other groups. In fact, most of the stuff you see anarchists doing at protests involves lots of planning. Some of that stuff you heard about happening in Washington yesterday may have sounded spontaneous, but most of it was planned beforehand.
;-)
Chuck