Arrogance ... Is It Really Effective in Organizing?

Arrogance ... Is It Really Effective in Organizing?
OK, I saw this article (excerpted below) back in July of 2001 and it made me so mad, I started shaking. I tried to forget about it, but now that things are getting really deadly and absurd, I have to pull it out again and write some notes about it. It reminds me of this time, I was organizing some protest of the Forest Service's mistreatment of the local Sierra Range and this Sierra Clubber guy I was talking with on the phone suddenly said, "You know Crazy Jeff, there are people that lock themselves to bulldozers and then there are people that know things." What blind and foolish arragance from a man who was mostly failing to protect any wilderness at all. So, all along I've been thinking, "well it is a big ocean of ideas and tactics out there ... live and let live." But, the problem with this, is that if you let the arrogant and ineffective wing of the Sierra Club speak for the environmental "movement," as it were, then the "movement" remains stagnant and irrelevant. I think we really need to check ourselves and call this kind of behaviour out, while suggesting some healthy alternatives.

The obvious solution to the problems I raise below are for the Kevin Danaher's of the "movement" to lose this arrogance and start talking among equals and for the "movement" to take a little history lesson and get with some real people again. Fewer "leaders" and "spokespersons" and more workers - that is it ... in general.



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full article posted here ... http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0725-08.htm

Anti-Globalization Effort Scores Points
Protesters' Influence Grows Despite Violence

by Robert Collier
July 25, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle

From Genoa, Italy, to the Bay Area, these are heady yet bewildering times for the growing throngs of people who are taking to the streets to denounce free trade.

Last weekend's Group of Eight summit was yet more proof that the anti- globalization movement has become the biggest left-of-center force for social protest in decades.

But many worry that the movement's newfound influence could be jeopardized by the hooligans who turned Genoa and other protest venues into battlegrounds.

Those thoughts were going through Kevin Danaher's mind as he wandered past block after block of burned cars and gutted buildings in Genoa.

"I've never seen anything like this," said Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human rights group that has been a key organizer in the anti-globalization movement. Speaking by telephone, he added: "The violence by police and by a minority of protesters have managed to wipe our issues off the table." ...

"We've advanced to the point where we have to show people that (reform) can be done without disorder," Danaher said. ...

"We have to figure out ways of disciplining the movement," Danaher said. "If we don't police ourselves, the police will do it for us." ...



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Crazy Notes: In Response to This Arrogant Drivel
--- * current system is violent and creates disorder ...

--- * (reform what? ... why reform corporate fascism? - abolish it of course)

--- * "violence by police and A MINORITY OF PROTESTERS" ... stay focused on police violence, elucidate reasons why the police end up serving the interests of the rich ... etc. focus on flaws of Berlusconi and regional police leaders who recruited fascist thugs and let the violence occur - rail on that ... anything the protesters did pales in comparison.

---* Who wiped the issues off of the table? Were they really on the table in the first place? ... This assumption that there was such a widespread and healthy dialogue going on between safe academes like Kevin and whoever else, is delusional. The issues are no where near any real decision-making table and they are not before the popular mindset ... so why pretend that they are, and then blame a few protesters (whose style you don't like - especially because they don't defer to you) for ruining it all? This is also distracting and takes away from the reality of who the real players are and the type of things that they are doing. (For example, when Kevin was whining about the violent protesters, officials from the US were in Pakistan setting up the next big war Afghanistan ... talk about disorder) and we (progressives) completely missed the boat on that one. Sorry Kevin the nice letters and polite protesting weren't putting the issues on the table in the first place. Time to read some history.

---* Calvin Klein, Nike and others have done way more to co-opt and water down "the message" or "our issues" than any protester with a stone. ... Again why not use the press opportunity to highlight these trends and suggest ways to get around this practice ... rather than railing on a minority of protesters who might actually be cops? If this is the best you can do with your five-minutes in the press, then, all the status-quo has to do is send out a few rock tossers ... and you are back to irrelevant whining.

---* Why assume you have the answers for the whole movement and that you know what will work and what will not? Times are changing and Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange, indeed anyone who identifies with the "left" is mostly irrelevant right now. They are certainly in no position to go around schooling people on what will work and what will not, when they are alienated from working-class americans and losing just about every agenda that they bring up.

---* Why talk down to people and create atmospheres of false hierarchies and so forth? Why assume that arrogance and left-coast "I'm cool-ism" is effective in organizing? It is proving itself to be very divisive and quite lame. Be yourself (don't pretend to be down when your not) and learn to talk to people like equals - until Kevin, and other self-proclaimed leaders can do these simple things, they have no place claiming to represent anybody.

---* "WE have to figure out ways of DISCIPLINING THE MOVEMENT ... " This is exceedingly arrogant and insulting. First of all, who is "we" in this case? Does it refer to insulated, suburban, mostly-white americans like Kevin Danaher or Medea Benjamin? Are they qualified to disciplin anyone? If they want disciplin they should sell everything they own ... move out of where they live and go start fresh with a job at McDonalds. Then they will learn about discipline themselves. I think that we (working people) have to figure out ways of getting around these self-proclaimed leaders because they are really doing a lot of damage and they are organizing without us. They are not representing us well at all and Kevin's quotes here only confirm that. What is needed is a self-directed movement of real working class people ... not more academes going around making cutesified blurbs out of every issue and then claiming to represent some movement that doesn't really exist yet.

---* And, if we really want to look at historic struggles and what worked and what did not, we will find these same tensions occuring over and over again. And, guess what folks, when nice little academes came out and asked all nice for things - they usually got ignored. On the other hand, when the more nitty-gritty workers were willing to militantly shut down the docks ... or when the sufragets were willing to hold hunger-strikes and so on - this is when change usually happens. I wish we could all just call up our Senators from our cell-phones in our little hot-spring retreats (after the officially sanctioned protests) - and that they would just listen and implement the changes that we beseach them to. Unfortunately history has shown that the rich bastards don't really listen until you make them sweat a little. And, since our "movement" doesn't really have the numbers, the media, or the pull in Washington - the nice, polite, cutsified protests of the more afluent among us - is not really working. I'm glad that the WTO has to meet in Quatar. This makes it clear that it is not really a legitimate organization that enjoys widespread support. I'm not sure if this kind of tension can be created from the academic comfort zone of insulated people who can afford to fly to every protest that goes on around the globe. I'm glad the Europeans have some guts. Some day we will find ours.

---* We have to admit that we are really failing as a species right now and quit claiming false victories and heaping disingenuous praise on ourselves. A place to start is with humble questions and a thorough examination of how those who have been endowed with resources and leadership roles among the "left" have really failed. Maybe some people just need to get out of the way - until they can enter the group with humility and join a true "movement" of equals.