--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
What's your argument for why
> someone should go to a
> rally against the war? What is the plan? What will
> it accomplish? In
> what way will such a rally cause Bush to change his
> policy?
Nathan, these are good questions. I agree that very often demonstrations are nothing but a symbolic gesture...perhaps they give the participants the illusion of making change. On the other hand, I am sure that Yoshie would argue that the same is true of voting for Democratic candidates. Often, not always, she would be right in my opinion.
However- and this is just my opinion- I cant help but think that those huge rallies we had around the beginning of the war encouraged or forced Democratic politicians to take some kind of stand against the war.
Somewhere around that time the momentum was lost. Certainly something with a more tangible political impact..but I dont know what, so I cant really criticize UFPJ when I dont have a clear idea about it.
I dont know how we should recuperate that momentum. The anti-war forces are still out there though...maybe they will coalesce around some event, such as has happened in Italy around the death of the agent who took the bullet for the Il Manifesto journalist. Of course, we cant count on that.
Thomas
<<We are at such a point in mankind's evolution where changed conditions invalidate all our policies that have been so successful even in the recent past, and that presumably have constituted the ideal response to a presumably unchanging and unchangeable human condition. No wonder we are stupefied and confused-but our mistake is the same which many cultures have made before us, namely to force a rigid model upon a fluid reality.
Eric Jantsch - "Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and Planning in the Lefe of Human Systems"
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