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Wednesday, April 03, 2002
A very interesting discussion on yesterday's Palestinian march at Far-Left site Indybay.
There's two broad strains of thought on 'How to Protest,' these days. Strangely, they're both intellectually credible so long as you accept certain assumptions. The first is the 'Love Everyone,' scheme, which is the newer one. It'd be more accurate to call it the 'Community' approach. This one says that the purpose of a protest is to involve the entire community in a unified message. I guess the idea is that since political change happens on a local level, true activism means getting everyone to believe in a certain message. Then the change in policy desired will happen peacefully and democratically. This rules violent tactics out, since violence inherently divides communities and produces divisions. The second, and ancient, tactic is the 'Death to Infidels' approach. That's the one that sees protests as part of a war between the oppressors and oppressed. Peaceful protests don't get anywhere, since they don't change the existing, corrup, power structure. 'What use to organize a community,' they'd say, when the 'Democratic system' is a tool of the Corporations anyway.' So Protests are there to strike out, call attention to the struggle, and basically keep the war up. And of course, the two philosophies can't work in the same protest. Either you're calling for love and wheeling the kids and grandparents around, or you're throwing Molotov cocktails. Yesterday's march started as a Love-in, then either evolved or devolved into a 'Fuck Police and Highways' march. Naturally, the latter got the publicity. So of course the Molotovs see that as vindication of their tactics, and the Peacers see it as a hijacking of true protests. There's also big gender/age/occupation gaps in who believes in what philosophy, naturally. Email This Post! |
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