> Chuck-- I didn't say you did nothing useful, just that what you do is not
> movement building. It's the promotion of your own networks in a way that
> undermines useful coordination of broader forces.
Almost everything I do is predicated on the work helping movement building. I want to build movements, just not movements that promote liberal goals.
> You yourself often attack the idea of coordinated movements in favor of
> different groups doing their own thing. You attack others for demanding
> any group subordinate its own goals to a joint message and instead demand
> the right of groups like the Black Bloc to promote its own actions and
> message, regardless of the desires of other groups.
I've attacked specific movements, groups, and political tendencies. Being against the do-nothing vanguardism of the WWP/ANSWER is not the same as being against coordinated movements such as the anarchist, anti-capitalist and direct action antiwar movements. I work with some liberal movements such as the media reform movement.
When I attack other groups for insisting that my group of movement subordinate itself to their authority, I do so our of the common sense understanding that there are different groups and movement with different goals, strategies and tactics.
When your liberal movement tells my anarchists that they have to do this or that, I just have to laugh. Would the liberal wing of the anti-war movement subordinate its goals to anarchist ones? I just don't see that happening, nor would I expect that to happen. Perhaps when movements work together as equals, but that just doesn't happen very often.
The last time (2001) I spent time and energy trying to get the anarchist wing of he anti-globalziation movements to work with the liberal and labor wing, we were treated with a huge amount of disrespect.
It's also absurd when some people insist that the anarchist or radicals obey some kind of protest code which people think extends over some entire city.
> That's an anti-coordination position. You may want to defend it, but don't
> pretend you don't hold it.
I find it rather bizarre to have my position described as anti-coordination. Anybody who knows what I do everyday as an activists would also see that label as being the opposition of what I'm about.
Chuck