[lbo-talk] NYT on French unions

[Gar Lipow]

On 3/31/06, Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gar Lipow" <the.typo.boy at gmail.com>
> -At the beginning of the Iraq war no amount of "getting the
> -mesage right" would have put anti-war messages through the corporate.
>
> Sure it would have, not always perfectly, but close enough especially in an
> Internet world where smart messaging in any media would have been repeated
> and forwarded.  The problem was that the anti-war messaging was so bad that
> even most activists didn't want to listen to the podium.
>
> I've always been singularly unimpressed with complaints about the media as
> the problem just as I'm singularly unimpressed with complaints about lacking
> money as the cause of progressive failure.
>
> Many of the mass marches in American history have happened with little media
> support-- the 500,000 Webster march for abortion rights happened in 1989
> with no big media pushing it, just lots of networks of women fearing that
> the Supreme Court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade.
>
> Spanish media may have helped encourage turnout in LA, but the rest of the
> media was quite willing to promote the message of the organizers that it's
> wrong to criminalize immigrant workers and those like the Church who help
> them.   It was a clear message backed by mass action and resonated with a
> large portion of the population, so it projected well into the mainstream
> media.
>
> The antiwar movement has neither had a consensus message internally nor one
> that resonated well with the American people, even ones who didn't like the
> war.  When many folks against the war are embarassed by the antiwar rallies,
> it's hardly shocking that the regular media doesn't cover it well.
>
> Nathan Newman
>

Nathan you are both wrong and supporting my point. Wrong because there
were plenty of non-partisan smartly phrased anti-war stuff on the
Internet. There was a huge center left blogsphere even then full of
beautifully crafted messages - (Atrios/Duncan Black, Billmon/Whiskey
Bar, Jeanne D'Arc (who is more grass roots, and maybe not quite so
center these days). Hell you had your own Blog. Maxspeak had his.

But your larger point is at least  half right. I think lack of money
and media makes a huge difference - but most of all what makes the
difference is lack of boots on the ground - grassroots people putting
in a little bit of time every week. That is the gold standard; that is
the basis for everything else. If you have that they can help get your
message out. Hell if you have that some of the stupider tactics get
filtered out - cause people will put their energy into stuff that does
not alienate them, and give nothing to stuff that does.   Of course it
is not enough by  itself. You need really smart intellectual labor  -
including wonkery and theory. You need media and communication.  But 
everything else works better if you have that day to day movement to
work in.