[lbo-talk] What Does It Take to Get 5% of Americans to Act like French Protesters?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

> mike larkin wrote:
> >
> > http://alternet.org/blogs/themix/34332/
> >
> > "....It is high time for the anti-war movement to take
> > a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about
> > what they see. A poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed
> > often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects
> > and idealism that barely constitutes a "movement," let
> > alone a winning cause.
>
> What a jackass. He describes the anti-war movement as though it were a
> single person who is being bad. What in the hell else than what he
> describes has any movement in history not been at _most_ points in its
> history -- including the American and French Revolutions, the
> anti-slavery movement, the Women's Suffrage movement, most union  
> drives,
> the Civil Rights Movement. And not a single one of them was ever  
> helped
> by this sort of carping from the sidelines. Criticism has to be  
> internal
> to be of any use whatever. Whine Whine Whine. The whiners should  
> simply
> go out in their own community and create another grouplet according to
> _their_ principles.
>
> Carrol

The population of France is about 60 million.  On 18 March, about 1.5  
million French students and workers protested, and on 28 March, about  
3 million of them did so.  That's about 2.5-5% of the French  
population, and yet the country is already nearly ungovernable.  So,  
the question is, what does it take to get 2.5-5% of Americans to get  
mad as hell and _act like French protesters_ (as opposed to  
demonstrate every six months or so, without shutting down a single  
city)?

Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://montages.blogspot.com>
<http://monthlyreview.org>
<http://mrzine.org>