At 10:35 AM 2/10/2012, Doug Henwood wrote:
>On Feb 10, 2012, at 9:47 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
> > (Interesting comments by Andrew Pollack and Jon Flanders on Lou
> Proyect's Marxmail list)
> >
> >> So last night I went to an incredibly energizing Occupy the DOE
> (Department
> >> of Education) event, where 3,000 young, very diverse teachers and students
> >> tried to stop a vote to close dozens of schools...what if black
> blockers tried to
> >> do their criminally stupid acts at an ODOE event?!
>
>But of course they wouldn't. Does anything think they would?
>
>I don't get the intensity of debate over the BB. Sure, they do some
>stupid, annoying stuff, but how much does that matter? Cops don't attack
>because of the BB - they attack because that's what cops do, repress,
>often violently. How many people have ever been beaten or arrested because
>of provocations by the BB, and not because cops were acting according to
>type? You could have an argument over whether the port shutdown/general
>strike in Oakland was a good idea (either in concept or execution), or
>whether the general strike called for NYC on May 1 is a good idea. But
>those sorts of things are different from the BB approach.
>
>Two other things. You're not going to get even significant reforms unless
>people in power are scared, and to scare them, you need some violence. No
>one will listen to sensible reformers without the threat of something
>worse to which they appear like comfortable alternatives. And a large
>portion of the pop is always going to see a radical movement as
>threatening. Nothing you can do about that. Even the civil rights
>movement, which is now mostly seen as unambiguously virtuous, was regarded
>with deep suspicion at the time. As Dorian Warren pointed out, polls
>showed that many, maybe most, people agreed with their goals but not their
>tactics. Any challenge to orthodoxy is always going to be seen as violent
>in some sense. The amount of destruction in Seattle was trivial, but in
>mainstream memory, it was like a Richter 8 earthquake.
>
>Doug
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