[lbo-talk] DC: Costs of big marches

Liza Featherstone lfeather at panix.com
Mon Sep 26 12:49:15 PDT 2005


Actually UFPJ did organize civil disobedience -- it's happening today.

LIza

on 9/26/05 3:40 PM, Chuck0 at chuck at mutualaid.org wrote:


> Sean Johnson Andrews wrote:
>
>> So how do you explain the civil rights movement and those marches?
>> These were an organized set of people that supposedly had very little
>> effect on the capitalist class--and didn't have voting rights either.
>> Maybe I'm just romanticizing, but it seems that a march can have some
>> effect even if it isn't along class lines, though I don't really know
>> how. It seems there is a space where ideology and ruling class
>> interests don't necessarily correspond.
>
> I may be wrong, but most civil rights marches and protests were illegal.
> There was an element of risk to those protests--people put their lives
> on the line.
>
> Nobody at ANSWER or UFPJ is even risking arrest when they organize these
> permitted spectacles. This is my chief beef with these groups, because
> their only strategy is to organize safe, permitted events. Perhaps we
> should give them credit for doing this well, but they don't deserve any
> kind of leadership role for this one note strategy. I would have much
> more respect for an organization or coalition that was mixing up mass
> protests with civil disobedience and other risky and non-risky tactics.
> The Mobilization for Global Justice, for example, organized both
> permitted rallies, educational events, and civil disobedience. ANSWER
> and UFPJ, on the other hand, adhere to the leftist myth that simply
> getting out more people to permitted events will make a significant
> difference.
>
> Chuck
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