Tom Walker wrote: ``Nothing -- short of sustained, mass civil disobedience -- will alter this political equation...''
``Disobedience of what laws, by whom, where, when?'' Doug
``...in the first flush of excitement after the Kent State killings) was to write leaflets and organize small groups of two or three to DISCUSS, in the hallways outside particular classes, the way in which current events related to the content of those classes. The idea was just as foggy then as in this recall of it...'' Carrol
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The above follows a spectrum that begins with civil disobedience and protest and evolves to organized teach-ins, but there are many more pieces to the puzzle.
That next piece is the real beginning, and that is the evolution of alternate organized institutions. At Berkeley this path was followed several times over a series of movements. The move from teach-ins to an alternate academic course taught in the halls against a back-ground of marginal or completely empty lecture halls was part of the Third World Strike and Reconstitution (1968-9). What a lot of people don't realize is that People's Park started as spin-off of these teach-ins and community action organizing, that began in the College of Environmental Design as a kind of urban-ecology experiment: take abandoned urban renewal lots and turn them into a community park, recreation, and urban design and ecology center. Of course all that was superseded when the University marched the Highway Patrol, Alameda County Sheriffs, and campus cops in and cleaned out all that hippy shit and erected a chain link fence---which lasted about two or three hours....
But the point is move from one level to the next.
Chuck0 has been posting some interesting things on New Orleans French Quarter where local residents organized themselves into a relief program (French Quarter Struggles with Crisis). If they haven't already, they will soon be in combat with the State and Feds over running their own program and their own neighborhood. They can use that as a means to build their local power and keep their loose organization together---and if they succeed, they will be in a position to command a good amount of leverage on any re-development once the city government is re-constructed... From there, they can use their organization and its popular support to seriously impact the whole city---if they can establish citizen councils of people in other neighborhoods--in city wide coalitions.
They can import their own experts from local colleges and universities (and laid off or retired city officials) in city planning, architecture, social welfare, education... and start becoming a popular force to contend with. And they will have to contend with the inevitable asshole redevelopment money pigs who will be dropping out of the sky and crawling out the woodwork any day now. You can bet that the redevelopment money-boyz are deeply linked with the City and State government and FEMA and are already on various boards, committees, and probably already cashing their first federal checks.
The people in New Orleans need to be ready to face these pricks before they surface with their ready-made plans and paid in advance scams.
This general pattern is more or less how many of the politically aware community projects around Berkeley began. Many were co-opted and made meaningless gestures---but that's a different story.
So the main point is that protest and disobedience is simply the first phase. Carrol's teach-ins are part of a second phase, that is more fully developed into action committees that actually do work on change, by organizing that change within the context of the issue---in New Orleans, that probably involves the whole social welfare of the city and its no doubt completely missing city plan, zoning regs, codes, etc. The people have to become experts in all these municipal government functions (in order to be ready to replace them with their own measures that meet their needs and not some money bags asshole).
City hall is gone. Move in and take over... Remember the old slogan, Seize the Time? We are looking a complete break down of every level of government, right? Well, so fuck'm. This is a golden opportunity to take back your city.
You'll need some marginal support from a few elected officials and/or city bureaucrats you trust---if there are any. They can be a tremendous advantage, especially in keeping the police and military from killing you. Because if you really start to become effective as a political force, they will come after you... and you will need some thin pretext of official sanction...
(I've gotta stop thinking like this... I might start believing it.)
CG