If I thought there was any chance of getting a few tens of thousands of people to march on Independence, Mo. and shut that fucking ammo plant down, if only for a shift or two, I'd be all for it. First, this war is hugely unpopular, and charging everyone as terrorists would not go down well with a large segment of the population -- after all, most people believe anti-terrorism laws should be used against actual terrorists. Second, even if only select protesters were prosecuted, there'd be a good chance they'd be turned into martyrs and the ensuing trial (there'd almost certainly be a trial!) could spark a national dialogue on inconvenient issues pertaining to the war and the PATRIOT act, etc... And what if one or all of the defendants _won_? -- that'd be extraordinarily embarrassing to the government. Third: nothing ventured, nothing gained. As Yoshie pointed out, ordinary people all over the world can be extremely brave, and regularly face off against regimes that are far more violent and lawless (at least domestically) than the one we need to deal with. Think about all the people who have been, and will be, arrested in the protests in Burma -- many of them will suffer a fate probably far worse than anything Uncle Sam could cook up against anti-war protesters in the present climate. But they hit the streets anyway. If only I were 1/10 as courageous...
Okay, so maybe storming Independence isn't a viable option right now. Could we do something comparable in a more friendly location with better courts? Are there any smallish military installations in, say, California? Could you cause problems for them with, only a couple thousand people? A few hundred? These are the kinds of conversations we ought to be having instead of pissing and moaning about how much the Dems suck and there's nothing that can be done because the left is so paralyzed and impotent. I'm sick of that shit: it's depressing and boring and probably more self-fulfilling than we'd like to think.
My impression is that a lot of regular folks have been really traumatized by the Democrats' failure to stop this war. The 10th grade civics class narrative about how representative government works -- which is all most people have -- has been shattered. This, combined perhaps with the problems in the credit markets, presents a rare opportunity for the left to remind people that there is an alternative to wasting your time with American electoral politics. (I like to point out that one of the seminal events in the U.S.A.'s founding -- the Boston Tea Party -- was an act of politicized property destruction.)
Alright, this has veered into rant territory, but I feel that we need to start having serious conversations about what kinds of direct action can be taken in the coming months to make this war more difficult for the U.S. to pursue. Am I totally off base here?
-WD
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