I wish Ayers would make a real apology for the harm he did to the antiwar movement and the left. Katha Politt
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What is this?
Ayers made mistakes then and now. What's funny, and it is funny, he's gone in the wrong direction in both cases.
In my opinion, Ayers mistake now is to accept the questioning directed toward him with too little resistance. How? Turn the question around. Has the US government apologized for Vietnam, or any of the domestic police state violence conducted against its own people?
And of course the US government is not apologizing for its war and atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, in fact as far as I know it doesn't intend to dismantle its new and improved secret police state apparatus.
Then too, has any mass media outlet or news organization apologized for its war mongering and outright lies, and as key perpetrators that promoted state violence both here and abroad?
I am making these points directed to Ayers and Politt. Since Doug knows both, it would be nice to hear from them.
``These sorts of critiques aren't worth very much in so far as they all fail to grapple with the central question--what are the limits on resistance?'' Mark DeLucas
``There are no limits _in principle_ or abstractly...But there is the matter of political intelligence...'' Carrol
Both these responses seem like the correct points to make.
But these points need to be developed much further. The basic answer is that the judgment of how much and what kind of resistance should be based on and in proporition to the threat and actuality of state violence. The problem with carrying this judgement out in the concrete is that not everyone in resistance movements is under the same threat to the same degree. So there is always a spectrum of resistance.
Politt for example was not subject to the draft and all that went with the consequences of facing the violence of state power: war or prison?
When you face the power of the state directly, you really feel threatened down to your little tippy toes. The fight or flight response kicks in and there is a very strong impulse toward a very violent reaction.
Just as there were many break away movements from non-violent resistance in the civil rights movements, in a related dynamic, a similar process occurred in the anti-war movements. There is a shift here from anti-war to war resistance.
What seems to be forgotten is that the government and local police forces were reacting very violently, powering up both the abstract and concrete threats and violence. The resistance movements were reacting back, in a cycle of escalating violence.
For example, I went to one of the more famous peaceful sit-ins in Oakland that turned into a very violent and bloody mess. I realized it was deliberately planned to have that outcome. Planned? Yes, by the power apparatus: city, state, and federal. It was going to set an example of how the police and government were going to handle future anit-war demonstrations, peaceful or otherwise, that attempted to interfer with military operations. My reactions were wildly violent fanasties. After that experience it was obvious there would be no more peaceful protests especially if the target was military. This region was critical to conducting the war. There were dozens of targets here and they were made off limits to any form of open protest.
The conclusion was the resistance movements were now going to start using some dialectic of power and violence and it was shared by many. From now on demonstrations would start off peaceful with big marches and songs, but be mobile, and be ready when the police came out in riot gear. The era of civil disobediance was closing and the era of confrontation had begun.
Me and a close friend went over and over the tactics of violence and its relationship to resistance. We sit-in, they use night sticks. We use rocks, they use guns, we use guns, they use automatic weapons and armored cars, we use artillary, they use aircraft. We use aircraft, they use nuclear weapons. It was absurd.
Carrol (and Hampton) were right about Custerism. But there is more to be said. The other part of Ayer's and Weathermen's mistake was going underground in the first place.
The public protection systems operating on our side depended on being competely out in the open, being public, and being part of a mass with few or little isolateable command style leaders. There were certain tactical advantages to celebrity style leadership. The state can arrest the highest profile, usually the speakers and main actors, and try to make some charge stick. But most of the time the trials turned into mockeries.And the demos continued without the leaders in lock up.
If the police state apparatus was afraid of the spontaneous but organized (via solidarity) mob, it got even more afraid when it realized, most of the time there were no `real' leaders to arrest, no plans to ferret out, no systems of communications to monitor. This lack of deep organization, helped a lot to frustrate the application of state violence. The state started making too many mistakes with its targets. It looked bad, and only helped to reinforce the message, the state was the source of violence.
The spontaneous mob We, were carrying all this around in our heads meanwhile some temporary spokes man or woman was talking about the when and the where in the media. The police-state response was random photography, news video and police raids. This tactic didn't work, because most cases got thrown out for lack of evidence. The show trials themselves became running nightly commentary on state violence and only served to retrace the issues.
Some other parts to consider. There was a need for some underground activity but it was mostly facilitated military personnel who wanted out of the war. This needed some organization, but not very much, and could be handled without much risk. It was mostly informal and was aided by the CO networks and programs. The breakdown of the military apparatus was in play.
And in case all this seems archane, ego centered nonsense, and too encapsulated with personal history, I just watched the whole dialectic played out in Athens tonight.
CG