Costs of big marches- Re: [lbo-talk] DC

[Max B. Sawicky]

The presumption that the fabled $12 million is available for other purposes
is groundless.  It isn't.  If people are willing to buy a million dollars
worth of pizza, it does not follow that they would forego pizza and spend
instead on Brussels sprouts.

I also find it amusing that Nathan is aggrieved that more people gravitate
towards fun than towards work.  ANSWER is the McDonald's of today's protest
politics.  They know what people want.  Nathan doesn't realize, life is
short, so we eat dessert first.  If we lived in Newman Nation, we wouldn't
be having this conversation.  We would be in earnest three-hour meetings on
urban planning.

For the maximization of fun,

mbs

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]On
Behalf Of Nathan Newman
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 1:22 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: Costs of big marches- Re: [lbo-talk] DC

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Sure they are-- but are they necessary at a national level, where travel
>costs time and money?

-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

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