[lbo-talk] nuts watching nuts

[ravi]

On 07/10/05 12:39, Michael Pugliese wrote:
>    Ravi, these aren't students. They are lumpen. Back in '91, Gulf War
> protest,  I was part of a mob of a couple hundred anarchist punks in
> S.F. that also dragged newspaper racks and dumpsters into Market St.
> in front of the Chevron HQ, set them afire, and ran through the
> Tenderloin, a neighborhood even poorer than The Mission district where
> I lived once too, trashing property.
>   <...>
>    More effective by far was when in '91, thousands non-violently
> totally surrounded the SF Federal Bldg. Shut it down for a day.
>    The riots of the mid to late sixties, besides scaring the shit
> outta the USG and local authorities (and adding to illusions by white
> ultra-leftists that The REVO was building) accomplished far less to
> advance civil rights, than mass, non-violent March on Washington '63,
> marching on Selma, or the disciplined Birmingham movement that took a
> yr. to desegregrate buses, but, I guarantee 'ya, if there had been
> riots there, there would not have been widespread support for the
> demands of King et. al. in '55.
>    

i agree! you don't need to convince me of the value of non-violence and
pacifism -- i remain a gandhian to the core.

the piece you forwarded got me angry enough to not note that the issue
was a particular incident in SF. my bad. apologies for the hastiness.

however:


>    This kinda of sheeit, only shows how self-marginalized anarchists
> of this type are.

as opposed to what part of the left, in the US today, that is not marginal?

IMHO, one of the reasons is the sort of criticism offered by the
forwarded article: all sorts of psychoanalysis and innuendo, in place of
reasoning. the protests/activism of the youth has been dismissively (and
quite effectively) referred to as white teenage angst multiple times in
the past. by the right. this helps them avoid having to discuss the
larger issue of the target of the protests.

if we on the left are to criticize one of our own (yeah, what a
sentimental fool i must seem ;-)) should we not take care to not just
avoid but counter the language games of the right?

	--ravi