But how are people going to stop the war if they don't know who was right during the French Turn? I have the correct line in my newspaper right here, only $1...or maybe you want to read this book of literary theory - it's written by Slavoj Zizek on Lacan's perception of the negative ego according to Derrida - it's online actually ( http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern ).
I volunteer at a local infoshop where people come by and push 1917, Revolution ('nee Revolutionary Worker) and the like on us. I have a perverse curiousity about Trotskyite/Maoist/etc. sects (and far-right Catholic sects on the other end of the spectrum), so I am the local expert there if anyone cares to know about those people, and usually they don't. We sell pamphlets, and it's been suggested to me to do a pamphlet on all these groups. I've thought about doing one, I'd call it the "Loony Left", and would have little illustrations and gossip and dirt about various groups (James Robertson of the Sparts two-story duplex with hottub in Manhattan, The Jack Barnes/Mary-Alice Waters/Dan Styron story and that sort of thing).
While I would like to see the kinds of thing Chuck is talking about, I do think more preparation is required. I don't want to be a participant in some sort of charge of the light brigade. I look around New York City, which is supposed to be one of the most left-wing places in the United States, and I see the construction unions mobilizing people - to rally for the war in Iraq, days after the invasion.
How many radical bookstores are there here? How many food coops are there? How many (with at least some radical inclination) community centers are there? What kind of labor solidarity is going on here? It seems to me these things need to be built up more.
On March 19th, there was a march from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to Times Square, where David McReynolds and some others sat down in the street next to the recruiting center and were arrested. I realize to stop the war people will need to do things that will get them arrested - such as sitting down in the street like they did. But when I looked on the sidewalk, I saw only several hundred people watching this. One reason for there not being more people there is due to left infighting, WRL (UFPJ) and the IAC had scheduled marches at the same time. I thought to myself - why get myself arrested when so many people didn't even bother to come out today? At least I came out, and captured the event on my camera for posterity (and Indymedia).
I think in a lot of people's minds, there needs to be more of a mass movement before direct action and civil disobedience makes more sense.
Of course, some brave souls will do it now, but it needs to happen on a mass scale to be effective, like it was in the Vietnam war. And for that to happen you need a mass movement. To build that mass movement you need people organizing. And what that means is commitment - commitment to do the grunt work that keeps local activist spaces open, that make events a success, that put out event calendars and so forth.
A question so many people ask is "how can we get the average person to join us?" The question I have is, "how can we hold on to the person who voluntarily attempts to join us of their own volition?" First things first, as they say.
Lance