I'm kinda responding to this in a broad sort of way. There's no doubt that the long standing work of counterstructures is important and a lot of that work is kinda boring and is often unfulfilling. I'm in the middle of helping my union get folks active to pressure the university about contract negotiations and the expectations of older organizers and new ones is remarkable. At the same time, organizing can't be simply drudgery if you expect it to be sustainable. There needs to be points were there are small victories, things that feel accomplished, etc. CD can be a nexus for these kind of accomplishments (once again... not a substitute.) I think that a successful movement has to operate somewhere between absolutism and accepting the status quo of popular opinion. We are not going to magically transport thousands of people to engage in an action that could have occurred in Italy in the 70s, but without some pushing and risking of alienation, nothing is going to happen.
robert wood
> You know, it's funny. I'm living in a hYOOOOGE military town right now. I
> interact with people everyday who have spouses, children, and even parents
> in the .mil, some stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. You can pretty much
> say
> what you think about getting the troops out. No one bats an eyelash, not
> even guys/gals IN the military. Not even the woman I was talking to at
> work, who's thinking about re-enlisting. No shit, she is. And she'd
> probably put to shame all y'all that have some pretty bogus notions of
> what
> kind of people join up during war-time. She really doesn't give a shit
> about it, in terms of being a warrior. It's a job, and it was a damn good
> job by comparison. You got some stress, but you don't have the stress of
> say, advertising sales.
>
> I expected to see a lot of rah rah siss boom bah patriotic flag-waving on
> bumper sticks, but I swear to dog I saw more of that in LimpDick. About
> the
> only thing I've seen is a chevy blazer with a huge painted message on it
> about how her son was stationed in Iraq and did YOU support him?
>
> That truck's message impressed me as one in which the mother felt the
> desperate need to make this plea to an otherwise hostile or apathetic
> majority. I don't know, it just did sitting there in Walmart, sticking out
> like a sore thumb in a Walmart located on a highway that's named after the
> fact that it was a supply road between between various military bases in
> the area. (I don't know how many there are for sure, but off the top of my
> head I can think of 3 air forces bases, 5 naval bases, 3 army bases, and
> probably some marine installations I don't know about. All I know is I see
> them running down by the harbor every morning. Which is funny because, the
> ones that go into the army? About 20% of them are overweight. What a
> ragtag
> bunch -- not in formation at all, barely making it across the bridge,
> huffing and puffing like they were chain smokers.
>
> None of this is to say that I think we have what ComRod Cox calls the
> "cadre". My objection to CHuck's line of thinking is not just that we
> don't
> have the numbers -- we don't. It's rather that people tend to be pretty
> wishy washy. They like to complain. But they look down on extremists. Like
> Doug says about poll responses, USers can't stand to be pinned between
> extremes. They don't want to be seen as one. They've spent much of their
> life putting down anyone who gets too much into anything -- and they
> especially frown on people who are too extremist in terms of politics.
> Entire talk shows and radio programs and editorial personalities in Alt
> Rags are based on the notion that they are the common sense middle road
> between left and right. Our vocabulary puts down anyone who is *partisan*
> -- as if that's a bad thing to take a side, to take a stand.
>
> What is needed is what Carrol always said: a lot of patience. A
> willingness
> to build alternative organizations that carry out the boring, ordinary and
> very necessary working of building and maintaining a movement
> infrastructure: communications, leadership skills, organizational skills,
> negotiating skills, people skills, knowledge, research skills, information
> gathering, information protection and information security, etc.
>
> These are very real things that vital movements need and people don't
> often
> have. Ralphie--White Sox--Nader is right that people were more involved in
> civic groups in the past -- in things from little league to sewing circles
> to the Moose Club that helped people cultivate these skills and build
> communications networks of people and information. Today, lacking this
> sort
> of thing, and people lacking the desire to participate because they have
> other things to keep them occupied: television, continuous training,
> getting exercise b/c you don't on your sendentary job, the demand to care
> for children who, in the past, were left to their own devices b/c we had
> diff. norms about parenting....., we have a hard time gathering people in
> ways that can help us build alternative organizations.
>
> The groups I've investigated here, carrol's right again, do the heavy,
> dirty work -- and in what can obviously be a pretty hostile environment
> when people want to be. There's a vibrant arts community that does what it
> can. There are the religious peace activists who are the core of the
> antiwar movement and always have been. These folks are in it for different
> reasons and, as a consequence, they don't sit around gazing at their navel
> trying to figure it all out muttering "woe is us who can't get our head
> out
> of our ass because we just don't try hard enough and just aren't smart and
> creative and noble enough...."
>
> The reason why building the movement in the way Carrol says matters is
> that
> people will become creative and noble, not that they aren't already, when
> their circumstances and the social milieu within which they work together
> with others on a common goal demands it of them. When they feel they can
> no
> longer situation as it is. It's happened to me a couple of times. I've
> watched it happen. People step up to the plate when it matters and trying
> to force the situation -- and berating people for not being noble and
> risk-taking enough now -- seems pointless. It requires a level of
> judgmental bullying that I find problematic, because the people attracted
> to such moralizing, humilation inducing language too often do so because
> they're attracted in a narcissistic way. Because they want a leader to
> tell
> them who they are and what they ought to do. Because they too willing give
> up themselves in order to become something someone or group exhorted them
> into being. It seems to me a very weak and tenuous relationship to a
> social
> movement and, thus, a recipe for failure.
>
> I'm re-reading Hirschorn's The Workplace Within and a lot of the stuff he
> talks about in there can be applied -- hence the psychoanalytic
> language.....
>
> The examples Doug provided in response to WD are examples I think are good
> ones: the type of movement building, community education, and solidarity
> building activities that can sustain and slowly grow a movement.
>
> Anyway, this bitch has worked 46 hrs alreayd this weeka nd I'm bushed. I'm
> going to go unpack some more. I f I can work up the energy, I'll post some
> pics later.
>
>
>
>
> Bitch | Lab
> http://blog.pulpculture.org (NSFW)
>
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