[Peace-discuss] What do we do now?

[Ricky Baldwin]

Well, we hope so, anyway.

And I think Carl is right.  Mahajan has an excellent
point, although I think we will need to go a bit
further to have a noticeable impact.  

For example, I just interviewed the respected
sociologist Francis Fox Piven (Poor People's
Movements, The Politics of Turmoil, Why Americans
Don't Vote, etc.), who has made a life's work of
studying movements, as the subtitle of one of her
books says, "how they succeed, why they fail."  

She pointed out, among other things, that "...what
that movement did was express opinion.  They marched
in large numbers, they rallied, and it was a kind of
voting, voting in the streets.  I think a successful
antiwar movement has to act in ways that throw sand in
the gears of the war machine.  Resistance has to be
more serious."

And in fact that is what her research shows, time and
again: opinion is one thing and it depends on whether
anyone cares about your opinion, but disruption is
impossible to ignore.

Food for thought.

Ricky

--- jencart at mailstation.com wrote:

> Exactly.  
> 
> Plus lemme add that our protests might have an
> impact on Kerry.  The largest protests in history
> have had zero impact on Bush.
> 
> Jenifer C.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "C. G. Estabrook"
> <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Oct 8, 2004 1:00 AM
> To: Peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] What do we do now?
> 
> Getting the Bush administration out of office is
> important, but not
> "irrespective of Kerry's positions and statements." 
> The reductio ad
> absurdum is obvious: would voting against Bush still
> be appropriate if
> Kerry were a Nazi?  But of course he isn't, and on
> some matters (mostly
> domestic) the Democrat policies are to be preferred.
> Moreover, the
> election is a referendum on the Bush administration,
> and they shouldn't
> win it.
> 
> But Mahajan is no fool. He makes some explicit
> suggestions of what we
> should be doing, given that (as Chomsky recently
> remarked) "elections are
> a matter of secondary significance: what's far more
> important is to build
> a democratic culture, in which they will be
> meaningful.  But they are not
> of zero significance.  In a swing state, anything
> but a vote for Kerry is
> in effect a vote for Bush.  Those who want to help
> give the Bush crowd a
> mandate can do so if they like, but they should not
> delude themselves
> about what they are doing."
> 
> Mahajan writes, "Everything that happens in Iraq
> should build our base. We
> must mobilize against bombing of civilian areas and
> build our base. We
> must mobilize against torture and build our base.
> Right now, we must
> mobilize against Bush administration plans to
> manipulate the January
> elections in Iraq (and the upcoming election in
> Afghanistan). Any election
> held under military occupation is illegitimate. But
> we can't stop the
> elections in Iraq.  Thus, we have to mobilize to
> ensure that the
> elections, while remaining illegitimate, are as free
> and fair as possible.
> In the process, we bring into the movement people
> who believe in democracy
> but were unsure about the occupation; we may even
> derail plans to fix the
> elections."
> 
> Allowing for the unlovely (and faintly oxymoronic)
> expression "build our
> base," we can still draw from this exhortation
> rather specific suggestions
> about what AWARE's media and publicity campaigns
> should be about this
> winter. There's in fact some interesting convergence
> on the overall goal:
> see the piece by the eminently middle-of-the-road
> Stanley Hoffman (as it
> happens, a former teacher of mine) in the current NY
> Review of Books ("Out
> of Iraq," http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17470). 
> He says that the US
> must treat Iraq as De Gaulle did Algeria -- which
> would mean "giving up
> the less-talked-about but central US aim of turning
> Iraq into a
> US-dominated satellite, with American bases,
> American companies in charge
> of its oil, and a compliant regime" -- a position
> contrary to Kerry's too,
> of course, which we should be talking about.  --CGE
> 
> 
> On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Morton K.Brussel wrote:
> 
> > I find articles like this frustrating. As if
> getting Bush out of
> > office is not important, irrespective of Kerry's
> positions and
> > statements (There is only one way.) If Mahajan
> believes that he is a
> > fool.  Moreover, it is one thing to say what we
> all SHOULD be doing,
> > as outlined towards the end of his piece, but the
> main conundrum is
> > HOW to achieve what he recommends. He complains,
> but offers nothing on
> > this HOW question. Should we storm the White
> House, the local armory,
> > stop traffic, distribute pamphlets, write letters?
> What? People are
> > acting, contrary to his thesis. There is no
> collapse of the antiwar
> > movement so far as I can see, but some lack of
> focus because our
> > challenge now is how to change an ongoing
> situation, not how to
> > protest a specific event such as the start of an
> invasion.
> > 
> > MKB
> > 
> > 
> > On Oct 6, 2004, at 12:31 PM, C. G. Estabrook
> wrote:
> > 
> > > [The following is the text of a radio commentary
> by Rahul Mahajan, 
> > > whose blog Empire Notes is quite good.  
> > > He seems to me here to make suggestions
> > > of the sort of thing AWARE should be doing this
> fall and winter. --CGE]
> > >
> > > 	Collapse of the Antiwar Movement...
> > >
> 
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