I would concede that, for a brief moment that morning, there was a Twitter meme about the WF manager telling employees they couldn't leave for the strike. Still doesn't justify the action (necessarily, particularly with your contribution) but the store was anxious enough about it to swiftly issue a statement that said they were allowing their employees to leave if they wanted. Don't know the truth either way and I admit I've been out of the (Extensive) loop of this conversation so sorry if all of this has been covered. Either way, just wanted to say I appreciate this input because it makes me question my own reflexive reaction to it, which is largely based on a national image of the store as being a fashionable paradigm of bourgeois evil (i.e. just askin' for it.)
s
On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 11:55, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> I tried to explain this. I did. You don't know the neighborhood.
>
> Where Whole Foods used to be, there was, for many years, a crumbling
> Cadillac dealership. It took a few years, and they built the Whole Foods
> there, and now, where there was blight, there is a new supermarket. Now, I
> do heartily hate Whole Foods and only shop there under duress, but that BB
> action made no sense to me. In that neighborhood, it's a good thing. The
> place is across the street from a middle school, which means that parents
> can stop and grab some groceries when they pick their kids up from school.
> Because of shoppers going in and out, it makes everything within its radius
> safer.
>
> And, as I said, it was quite a distance (about a mile) from Oscar Grant
> plaza, which means, anything done there would not even be visible to anyone
> except the hundred or so people around there.
>
> I completely fail to see what was radical about this action. The point of
> this revolution is not to destroy the goodies, it's to take them over.
> Because on one level they are already ours: we make it all work. For
> everybody to understand that is far more radical than smashing a window.
> The bolshies did not destroy the Winter Palace, they did not destroy the
> Kremlin.
>
> There is this unspoken assumption that violence = radicalism and that
> someone who questions the automatic appropriateness of violence is not a
> serious revolutionary. This assumption persists despite activists writing
> in and attesting to the fact that violence/vandalism is a sure way to thin
> the ranks. It persists despite Julio's eloquent citing of Marx. It persists
> ....despite the obvious fact that violence/vandalism is an act that betrays
> a lack of faith in the future and is clearly dangerous for one's comrades.
>
> This is the third and last go round on this subject. I've said what I've
> had to say. I'm going to stop here.
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> without the slow motion which shows the yellow helmet guy tackling the
> black bloc'r, being dragged away by people telling yellow helmet guy
> to stay out of it and respect DoT and then the rest of the
> non-violenters protecting whole foods. i'm starting to think the
> non-violenters were the paid assholes. but cops are too dumb for that
> kind of craftiness.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3HvGV3D1VU&feature=player_embedded#!
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
>
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