Tom Walker wrote:
>
> . . . .But even that kind of thing will not, of itself, lead to
> social transformation because at root the economy is not, has never been
> and never will be a free market. The market is a substructure of class
> rule not vice versa.
>
> What does have potential traction, though, is people becoming mobilized
> by taking *some kind* of concrete action, no matter how insignificant
> that action itself may be. [clip]
Interesting, and it gives me a way to label what Jan & I have essentially been doing within the anti-war group for a couple of years. New people to politics very soon come up with some variation of the (anti-?)slogan, "Let's do something," and if that demand is not, somehow, satisfied, they drop out before they can achieve any sense of the potential power of collective action. So one has to keep inventing "somethings" to do -- and those somethings, however trivial, are quite untrivial insofar as they keep people involved and provide practice (political and musical senses) in building an action.
But however inventive local activists are, their efforts will fail unless they have some regional/national focus -- which is the basis for my rage at what seems to me the betrayal of the movement by UFPJ over the past year. They had an obligation to keep the anti-war movement at least symbolically alive and independent of the elections -- and they did not honor that obligation. The M19 demonstrations were of _immense_ help locally; we continue to grow, but without something like that we might have disappeared by next fall.
Carrol