Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 05:05 PM CDT

Normally I wouldn\'t approve pieces like this that marginalize radical activists and do the work of the capitalists in splitting the anti-globalization movement. But this offensive article demonstrates the internal hurdles that the anti-globalization movements face. Marginalization of radical activists continues unabated, despite the best efforts of anarchists and anti-capitalists to find unity in diversity. The embrace of \"diversity of tactics\" by many anti-capitalists is an attempt to fidn a way for us all to work together despite our difference on tactics. But it doesn\'t help when liberals like Remick do the work of the capitalists in calling for the taming down of our dissent.

The folks in Argentina aren\'t congratulating themselves over nonviolent protests. They are resisting capitalism with everything at their disposal.

I\'ve talked to a few people about the protests last week in Canada, including a few people who attended the Ottawa protests. In their opinion, the Ottawa protests were a failure. The turnout was poor and their was no militancy in the streets. The protests failed to capture the attention of the world media, which will now force us to prove that the anti-globalization movement in North America has not died out.

Fortunately, the October protests in Washington, DC will be militant and confrontational. There will be no attempt to appease Big Labor or water down oru dissent for public opinion. The public is mad right now at corporations and will cheer every attack on capitalism.

Now is the time for breaking windows, not snake marches.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 05:07 PM CDT

Oh yeah, the preliminary target list for the October protests is now online:

http://www.infoshop.org/octo/thebigone.html

Bring a gas mask and a crowbar!

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 06:20 PM CDT

Well, even though we watered ourselves down, most of those big groups, NGOs, and unions who we were taming ourselves down to please have decided repeatedly not to show up or endorse the protests. How many more useless, \"peaceful,\" protests do they need to come back?

More likely that is irrelevant, as they are primarily focused on their organization and party\'s own self-interests, not the success of a protest. Of course they don\'t want to be associated with anything remotely law breaking or too anti-governmental because they believe in those instiutions and believe they can pressure them to support their ideas or win seats in their governments.

So instead of joining us in the streets to disrupt these instiutions they claim to oppose, they stay off (especially when they get the slightest fear the government won\'t like anyone out there who will be associated with dislking them) the streets, mock us, and continue to try to seek reform through more \"civlized\" and completely ineffectual methods.

Success can always be found out of nothing, even if 50 people showed up and left after an hour, someone could find \"success\" in that. Maybe those 50 people included some non-whites and a lot of women or whatever. Or the organizers put a lot of energy into planning the protests. Or most of the organizing was done by anarchists since the liberal groups are too busy kissing the government\'s feet right now.

But in the bigger picture, the G8 summit did not happen to the general public, the politicians sure did have one, but it didn\'t exist outside of Alberta. Almost the exact opposite of last year\'s summit.

The politicians never even had to address the protests outside. They practically didn\'t exist.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 07:07 PM CDT

\"The more radical direct-action wing, lead by Montreal\'s CLAC (Anti-Capitalist Convergence) and Toronto\'s OCAP
(Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) organized two days of marches in Ottawa.\"

I\'d just like to note, that as someone who was vaguely involved in organizing Take the Capital campaign, that while a number members of CLAC were involved in organizing Take the Capital! I would say that the majority of organizers were people living in Ottawa, (ie not related to CLAC). As to OCAP, I really don\'t know where she got her information, given that there VERY FEW people from Toronto helped organize Take the Capital.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 09:24 PM CDT

Part of the problem lies with us. Somehow, the events at the G8 and the events in Argentina had to be tied together, and they weren\'t. There have to be direct connections between the exciting and momentum-filled movement in S America and the fledgling and largely naive N America movement. FTAA means we are all in this hemisphere together.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:24 PM CDT

i heard an NPR report about the ottowa protest that said there was vandalsim and window-breaking. they also quickly outlined the (very watered down but still..) anti-capitalist position. so i dont understand why your friend said there was no militancy and it didnt get media. i\'m in the southeast and i heard about it. i didnt hear a thing about calgary, which may say something about the value of militancy.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:35 PM CDT

What a load of crap. Painting your ass as direct action? Come on! I tell you, those damn liberals crack me up. And, I\'m sure she\'ll be happy if we all unify around non-violence because it basically means we\'re unifying around doing nothing, which is the only kind of direct action that liberals are comfortable with, it seems. And this argument about keeping the movement accessible to all people through non-violence is just the latest backdoor argument they\'re using to keep anarchists inactive. Just like the \"people of color and women\" are alienated by violence arguments that have been made in the past, this argument is just as politically loaded and ridiculous. The logic alone is laughable: people who risk their skins to come here illegally are not interested in taking any risks. Sure, if all you\'re going to do is make a symbolic statement, then perhaps you need to concern youself with these issues so that everyone\'s \"message can get out\" to the proper authorities (who will do nothing, of course). But, if instead you are interested in real change, well, it takes a bit more than that. This article really bears little to no relationship to reality, which, now that I think of it, makes a lot of sense for a liberal. Of course, I know I\'m preaching to the choir.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:37 PM CDT

I\'d also like to point out that there was a certain level of millitancy seeing as how the Ontario Coaliton Against the Tories managed to open a squat in the middle of downtown... pulling that off in Ottawa looks like millitant to me. Check out a-infos and indymedia for more info!

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:55 PM CDT

If I had the time and resources, I would put together a video project illustrating the difference of media coverage in the anti-globalization protests over the past 3 years.

I have hours and hours of mainstream media coverage on tape. And I occassionally rewatch some of it when i have time and in the mood.

It\'s very clear that although the media tends to zoom in on the violence in protests (especially visually), they do discuss the issues a great deal more than we give them credit for while they are showing the video of the violence.

They don\'t go into intellectual or statistical depths but they do mention clearly why we are out there.

In contrast, during duller protests, the amount of time devoted to coverage is dramatically less and they do not discuss why we are out there nearly as much, if at all.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 11:11 PM CDT

-A police car was smashed in Ottawa (windshield, side windows)
-A squat is still alive a week later
-Lots of spraypaint, paint bombs and a few smashed windows
The corporate media, for once oddly, didn\'t report this stuff.
Also - the RCMP bombed a couple hundred protestors (snatched 30+) in Halifax at the G-7 finance ministers\' meeting a week before the G8 - and that scared some folks.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 02:05 AM CDT

The movement is definitely not dead, we had 20,000 people in New York for the WEF in the dead of winter, on only a couple months notice. Definitely not dead.

However, the one thing I notice about these big protests is that if the target is not visible, you will not get a large turnout. I think a lot of people didn\'t go to Ottawa or Calgary because the G8 was in neither Ottawa nor Calgary. There is no possible way protesting in either situation could have shut down the G8. It was a win for us to force the G8 to meet in Kananaskis. Ultimately, it was a win for them to militarize the zone and eliminate any possibility of having to address our presence.

Take for instance, the RTS! done in Naperville. How many *more* people do you think would come out if the TABD (which is coming to Chicago, by the way) were meeting there? A *LOT*.

Since September 11th, the only meeting we could have shut down was the WEF, and that was way too touchy of a political situation.

That changes in October. Our economy is in the shitter, Argentina has continually exploded over the last 8 months, large corporations keep falling due to \"accounting inaccuracies\" (ie, lying about just how much money they have), and the Pentagon continues to point their pistols at any country who so much as looks at them the wrong way.

And given all this, we now have the opportunity to shut down a meeting. And even if we can\'t do that, we can cause so much of a ruckus that the IMF/WB will be reeling from the force of the blow.

We probably won\'t get big labor support or NGO support like we\'ve had before. Here\'s how we counter that:

We find out which NGO\'s or unions have explicitly said that they will *not* go to this protest (due to fears of violence, patriotic adherence to Bush, whatever). And then we personally contact their rank-and-file and invite them to get involved on a personal, non-affiliated level.

They may not be involved in any official capacity, but because they won\'t have any strings attached, they\'ll be much more willing to participate in direct action.

Circuit

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 09:31 AM CDT

We\'ll be drawing the parallels between Washington and Argentina in the October protests. We will be shutting down the city Argentina-style.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 09:37 AM CDT

Yes, the anti-globalization is far from dead, even if you just zero in on English-speaking North America. I shouldn\'t say much critical about the attempt to organize protests in Ottawa, but Circuit is correct about people not being motivated to protest a far away target. This is probably the crucial mistake of the Canadian organizers. They should have organized an protest around the resort in Kananaskis, even if that involved thousands of people in the forest. Imagine what kind of media attention that would have gotten and think about the message that it would have sent to the world leaders.

It was a strategic mistake to not attempt an assault on the resort in Kananaskis.

It would be nice to see the NGOs and labor unions get more involved, but anti-capitalists are wasting their time if they put time into this. As Circuit says, we should spend more time contacting rank-and-file union members.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 10:17 AM CDT

i guess that for liberals who just want to pass messages to the media, it was more convenient to organize a protest in a big city. now for those who don\'t really a damn about what mainstream media think, it was pretty pointless.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 11:11 AM CDT

If you are arguing against summit-hopping, you won\'t find any agreement from me. There seems to be an increase in this bad argument that we should give up on \"summit-hopping.\" This is a dangerous and very privileged idea, that would in effect throw the baby out with the bathwater. Large protests are important for many reasons. First of all, we\'ve seen the effect that the large summit protests have had on simply increasing the amount of activism all over the place. The large summit protests have been very effective in casting the spotlight on these capitalist institutions and helping delegitimize them. Large summit protests have also gained the media spotlight and shown millions of people that they aren\'t alone in what they think about capitalism. These people have gotten together on the local level. The big protests also help us work together on big projects. We learn from our successes and learn a lot from our mistakes. They also help local activists form stronger connections simply throught he process of organizing and travelling together to a big protest.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 11:47 AM CDT

Definitely. We have a lot of organizing going on locally, and we\'re depending on the October protests to help put a shot of energy into people here.

If they go, they\'ll come home wanting to smash capitalism as soon as possible. If they don\'t go, they\'ll wish they had.

Circuit

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 02:43 PM CDT

I\'ll believe it when I see it- and since I\'ll never see it I don\'t believe it...

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 07:27 PM CDT

Are there any anarcho-syndicalist unions in North America? Because while I think anarcho-syndicalism is quite naive, since so many of them think they can create a violence-free revolution through unionism, while I think the riot cops might disagree... but I think that it\'s the best way to bring the apolitical working class into the movement because anarchist unions provide them with concrete advances through strikes+such while working towards a revolutionary goal. And the wobs can go fuck themselves.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 07:35 PM CDT

>>It was a strategic mistake to not attempt an >>assault on the resort in Kananaskis.

I\'m sorry, but goddammit Chuck... if you can find a dozen men and women who are willing to stage an assault on a fortress where they have no chance of getting in, and a guarentee of arrest and a brutal beating, then what the hell were you doing in DC?? Its easy to talk shit, its alot more difficult to actually put yourself on the line like that.

I was in Ottawa in November, and again a couple weeks ago, and I noticed a couple things. First off, had you trimmed the march on Wednesday down to the hardcore demonstrators, the situation would have been a lot different. When you\'ve got folks in black ready to rock surrounded by peaceniks and folks that can\'t run, it kills the militancy. I\'m not sure whether that is out of respect to the other marchers, or an inability of the militants to find each other, but this certainly happened on Saterday. Before I smash a window, I want to have a body of support. That body of support was difficult to find, which I believe prevented the more militant actions from happening. It\'s great to talk about smashing capitalism, its alot more difficult to get the courage to do so. Particularly when you have hippies yelling at anarchists when they break a police car window...

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 08:23 PM CDT

The IWW isn\'t A-S. You want an an A-S union, go start one. And when you try, you\'ll hear some of the same BS arguments you present here. Plus, the primitivists and other anarcho-labellists will rip on you for being Leftist, workerist, blah, blah, blah.

So if you want to fuck YOURSELF, go start an A-S union movement. (As as dumb, hopelessly naive Wobblies say: Direct Action Gets the Goods. As I say: No! Foul you, Otis!).

Have a nice day!

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 10:27 PM CDT

Uhh,anarcho-syndicalists do not \"think they can create a violence-free revolution through unionism\".

WE are qite aware of riotcops.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 10:31 PM CDT

I think it would be better to ring the fortress with activists, in the middle of the forest, than to do tame stuff hundreds of miles away.

What are we doing in D.C.? Well, first of all let me apologize for D.C. activists since we didn\'t send more people up to the protests. Secondly, we are busy organizing the biggest, most spiky protest for October that Washington has ever seen. This will not be a tame, permitted protest. We are talking lockdowns, blockades, property destruction, and a major disruption of the capitol of the American empire. This wont\' be easy, but we expect to have numbers on our side.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 10:33 PM CDT

Just what is the IWW these days? I have no clue, because I\'m a recent member and they won\'t even bother to mail me a newspaper.

The IWW needs some changes. Talk to Flint, because he has the best ideas for changing the IWW.

Nobody listens to me on this anyway.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 04 2002 @ 01:46 AM CDT

Nobody listens to me either.

Anarchists. :)

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 05 2002 @ 09:57 AM CDT

Chuck et al...
are you all familiar with the rugged expanse that is Canadian geography?
Alberta is comparable to the U.S. bible belt - a haven for neo-liberal oil money and neo-nazi organizing. Protest is unheard of in Calgary. Ottawa did have targets, such as the BCNI (now called the Canadian Council of Chief Execs) and the fortress-like U.S. embassy.
Many people in Quebec and the Maritimes could not have made it into the Alberta wilderness, which is easily defended with a couple of hefty road blocks and aerial surveillance.
In my opinion, it is counter-productive to unleash such vitriolic criticism of the Take the Capital organizers. Especially when you neglect to take into account what happenned at the G7 finance ministers\' meeting in Halifax.
They pulled a live gun. They tasered people up to 21 times. \"50,000 volts, fucker!\" cops yelled as they jabbed tasers at our chests.
They had dogs, pepper spray, machine guns and the usual arsenal. All of this for a couple hundred protestors.
Anyway - i love infoshop, but your analysis of Canadian protests seems to betray a Northern prejudice on your part.
Do you understand the population distribution in Canada? 30 million people scatterred over thousands of miles.
We have three clots of people - Southern Quebec, Southern Ontario and Southern BC (and Alberta).

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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2002 @ 04:28 AM CDT

\"The public is mad right now at corporations and will cheer every attack on capitalism.\"

Huh? Whom do you mean by the public? Out of dozens of people that I know fairly well - co-workers, family and friends - not a single one of them even comes close to fitting this description.

chris

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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2002 @ 06:16 PM CDT

\"Many people in Quebec and the Maritimes could not have made it into the Alberta wilderness, which is easily defended with a couple of hefty road blocks and aerial surveillance.\"

Yep. Plus the only group where I am from (toronto) that \"organized\" for Calgary sent a fucking plane where tickets were $700 each. Because they have so much influence, this was presented as the only option in activist circles. Of course people could hitchhike, carpool, take a bus, etc of their own accord, but the popularity of the plane idea shows a serious problem in the activist community. They called it \"air 6 billion\" - to represent the 6 billion people of the world. Gag.

Ottawa was good however. I haven\'t found anything about the squat being busted on this site but for news on that go to http://www.ottawa.indymedia.org. I was in the squat for two days and it was one of the most productive, empowering experiences of my life.... but predictably the police raid made me more angry than I can express....

Anyway to Chuck and others, I very much enjoy breaking windows, using spraypaint, etc, but i don\'t think this really accomplishes a lot in terms of public opinion. Protest has it\'s purpose - for people to demonstrate their opposition vocally.. whenever people start talking about violence and revolution, I wonder why we always have to invite the cops, or who thinks a broken window will put a serious dent in McDonald\'s bank account.

I was just reading an article about the ELF.. they are very inspiring, I wonder why they are one of only a couple of groups **in North America** that has realized that we need more REAL direct action in the world.

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