-Networking, man. Isn't it important for sympathetic people to meet -each other, make friends, share strategies, and generally feel less -lonely? I agree with you on the importance of institution-building, -but the affective side counts too.
I'm not against all marches and such. I'm just against the single-minded focus on them among too many activists, abetted by the ANSWER folks who are incapable of any other organizing.
And it's a reasonable debate on resources to ask whether the networking on a national basis is worth $12 million? A lot of folks are allergic to leadership but it's cheaper to elect delegates to a national meeting do that networking, while other folks do other tasks.
Part of what bothers me is that marches are more fun than other political work and we basically have the national leadership spending their time telling people that the best use of their money and time is to eat dessert.
So they spend $12 million and 2 million volunteer hours on dessert, while leaving most day-to-day organizing on antiwar work chronically underfunded and with with few volunteer hours on boring outreach work.
My criticism is of the antiwar leadership. If they were spending most of their time promoting institution-building and the more prosaic mobilization work, I'd be far more friendly to the occasional march to raise morale.
But it's the disproportion between priorities that gets my ire.
Nathan