[lbo-talk] Quote about protesters at Dem convention

[B.]

"Much of the [Denver] protest is really the dying embers of the late-Nineties anti-globalisation movement, hamstrung by its internal contradictions. The ‘behaviour guide’ for the protest convergence centre detailed a bewildering list of self-administered regulations from the sensible – no videoing in the centre – to the self-managing stalinoid – ‘no rumours – if you have news report it through appropriate channels – no group-based arguments’ and so on.

"Bizarrely, the anarchists had succeeded in creating a space that felt uniquely unfree. Where, on the street, one wondered, were the unions and the workers? Where were the Hispanics? Where were the blacks? Why were these groups so willing to invest all their political will in a party that was displaying very little of such? How have they been persuaded to subordinate themselves to a process trying to draw a politics out of such thin air?"

-- Guy Rundle, "Obama's Democrats: As Conventional As Ever", Spiked-Online

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/5653/