shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> At 08:18 PM 12/4/2009, SA wrote:
> >shag carpet bomb wrote:
> >
>
> an anti-war movement is about getting other people to do certain things in
> the context of a social movement. the focus isn't politicians. the anti-war
> movement or the free tuition movement or a prison reform movement is
> directed at government. the party ostensibly in power is irrelevant to its
> existence and its goals.
Amd tthe hardest part of _building_ an anti-war movement is that too many of the people in it at the beginnng have SA's perspective, and an enormous amount of time in meetings is wasted before clarity is achieved on this issue; this happens _each_ time the movement has a burst of growth. The new people are obsessed with persuading PRO-war people and PRO-war politicians tobe anti-wr. Of course it never happens -- even the new peopl weren't rached in this way. They were people who had always been at least vatuely against the war, and the public momentum of the movement (the general social/cultural atmosphere created) has drawn them in.
As far as I know, only two anti-war movements in history actually had a significant impact on state policy: The Bolshevik Revoution and the anti-wr movement of the '60s. The success of the latter did not involve "changing the minds" of politicians. Rather, it (a) added to the general social disruption generated by the Black Liberation Movement, thereby threatening to make normal civil life impossible and (b) thereby creating an atmosphere in which it became easier and easier for the fightng soldiers to say "Fuck It" and stop fighting. That ended the war: a situation in which it was simply impossible for the State to go on without ending it. And from that emerged the Nison Two-edged strategy of reasserting "Normalityh": (a) bribes (OSHA, Disability Act, etc) and (b) heavy repression (murder of Panthers, war on crime, etc).
At no point was changing the mind of politicians a part of the movement. Often we would collect sitgnatures on petitions and then not even bother to send them in. The important part of a petition is that each signature represents a conversatin betwen an activist and a potential activist: it represents people getting togethr -- and that is thretening. There is a reason that "the right to petition" has to be fought for, while under the worse tyrannies people can write letters to the ruler!
Carrol