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The HP Collective
Anarchist critique of the action in San Francisco
March 4th Recap: The Inaugural San Francisco Budget-Cuts Walkathon
By A.W.
Where to begin, where to begin…March 4th has come and gone and I am filled with regrets, disappointment, resignation, resentment, and anger. This evening I’ve come to certain, sad, conclusions about the dynamics of the student movement which have always existed as vague impressions lurking in the recesses of my optimistic (evidently too much so) mind. Before I’m silenced by a dismissive “Well, what did you expect…the student movement is ostensibly one which is trying to protect their interests as future actors with the discourse and logic of capital” – let’s consider the facts and the build-up to today.
Autumn 2009 saw a certain specific radical escalation in terms of this struggle, in ways which often made no material demands but instead struggled to physically actualize and articulate a space in which the logical of control and authority was effectively challenged. Many student radicals all over California, used occupation not merely as a means to draw attention to the fiscal crisis that our education system has found itself in – but rather, more ambitiously and in my opinion righteously, used the tactic of occupation as a means to (on a purely visceral and symbolic level) take back control of their individual experience of living within the totality of capitalist relations. The rhetoric surrounding many of the communiqués supports this, such texts released by various autonomous groups at Santa Cruz and Berkeley all were engaging in a discourse which made it evident that the radical milieu of the student movement was not thinking about fee hikes and budget cuts…but rather questioning the very institution of academia itself and its role in the maintenance of not only intellectual hegemony but also social construction in the broadest sense. Texts like “A Communique from an Absent Future” and materials put out by groups like La Ventana Collective (many of which have been anthologized in “After the Fall: Communiques from Occupied California” by the good folks at Little Black Cart) pointed to a serious engagement with current anarco-insurrectionary discourse. They’ve taken their cue from the Tarnac/ Invisible Committee folks, done their Situationist homework, and echoed, albeit in fresh new ways, the sentiments expressed in May ‘68. All this is a roundabout way of saying that there is indeed a radical contingent in the California student movement, and my problem with today/tonight was that this contingent was almost entirely absent from the “actions” in San Francisco.
The rally at civic center was organized to be “family-friendly” and was being touted as the central convergence point within the Bay Area. This obviously was the case as the turnout clearly surpassed the numbers in “demonstrations” elsewhere in the Bay. But for what this convergence had in numbers, it lacked in a radical contingency such as that seen in Oakland by several hundred folks occupying the freeway and causing gridlock for hours. Even the actions in Santa Cruz escalated to the point of genuine confrontation with police.
San Francisco let me down on this one.
At approximately 6:15 p.m. or so, just as the sun was starting to set a small march broke away from the mass rally at civic center quickly gaining numbers until a few hundred people were marching down Market St. right downtown. I had been desperately waiting for night to fall, to see what would enfold once we left the predictable monotony of the rally. My critiques of the majority of the marchers are no different from the general anarchist vs. liberal debates that plague almost every large demonstration from mobilizations against G20 summits to the recent anti-Olympic actions in Vancouver. There was a group (I’m assuming they were one as many of them wore matching shirts and situated themselves at the front of the march through downtown with their megaphones) which effectively hijacked control of the march, collaborated with police (by telling them where we were headed), and physically impeded individuals attempting to escalate and engage in more militant actions.
I don’t know who the fuck you all were or where you from, but please accept this most sincere and genuine FUCK YOU ALL.
It reminded me of the civilian pawns, “community arbiters” in their bright neon-green jackets during the Oscar Grant Rebellion last year in Oakland. The police have nothing to fear, when something as seemingly rhizomatic as a march, is policed by people within our own ranks who are saying they are our comrades. We were told by the “organizers” to stay only on one side of the road, not to march down one-way streets, and they physically stopped the march from crossing red lights. To add to all of this insanity, I saw someone pull a trashcan off the sidewalk into the street to impede the path of motorcycle police and one of these march hi-jackers went and picked up the trash can and replaced in its rightful place. Of course the generic, trite, idiotic chants were present and I found it most ironic that folks were chanting “Who's streets? Our streets!” while sticking to one side of the road and obeying all traffic laws as if we were one really long and loud human bus. Don’t define the nature and limits of our individual struggles, you don’t speak for all of us. A diversity of tactics was not, I repeat, NOT given space here to grow and actualize.
We walked through some of the most opulent and affluent displays of egregious wealth in the entire Bay Area – the Union Square area downtown. Multi-national corporations, all sorts of banking centers, the flagships of commodity consumption – and nothing. Nothing. A few hundred young individuals, angry (not enough), and nothing. To you liberal shits who will say, “Nothing? How can you say nothing! We marched through the streets peacefully for our cause(s)! We gained attention for X,Y,Z.” I say this to you…Within the physical realm, the realm of material day-to-day relations smashing the storefront of bank who received a bailout while your little college education keeps getting more expensive doesn’t accomplish anything. But it’s equally as stupid as marching on the right side of the street and collaborating with police thinking that you’re accomplishing something.
That said, the nature of a militant confrontation does accomplish this: smashing the window, burning the dumpster, confronting the authority of a hostile police force – does something ontologically. I am a firm believer that participating, experiencing, and fully engaging in explicitly transgressive social behavior such as a riot or black bloc demonstration both deconstructs and redefines one’s ontological relationship to authority. It is a level of empowerment that one cannot find through the general boring conduits of activism alone, it is something much more profound than this. It is a recognition that the relationship of subservience to dominance is not static, it can move, bend, and it is one which is purely contextual, subject to the will and desire of its actors.
The march eventually circled around back to Market Street and back to Civic Center. One of the march hijackers jumped on a pedestal (oddly poetic and perfect for their group’s self-aggrandizing posturing) and shouted on the megaphone, “Great job guys!” For a second I thought this hijacker was going to hand us all little gold-star stickers. No prolonged engagement, no discussion on what to do next, simply a mass dispersal. I shit you not, when I say that within 10 minutes a crowd of approximately 300 folks dissipated instaneously because of their deference to the authority of these march “organizers.” They said we’re done, so we must be done. Nothing else to do, let’s not talk about alternative strategies, lets just all pat each other on the backs, thank the cops, and go home and watch TV.
One friend in my affinity group remarked that this was, “The San Francisco Budget-Cuts Walkathon” and another, “Critical Mass without bikes” – and to be completely honest, that’s what the march felt like. Like we were all on a really large cross country team training for our next meet.
To conclude: Fuck you San Francisco, this East Bay kid should’ve stayed on his side of the bay today. Thanks to Oakland for saving face by taking the freeway! Hella nice kids, hella nice!
Final Score: Oakland 1 – San Francisco 0
By A.W.
Where to begin, where to begin…March 4th has come and gone and I am filled with regrets, disappointment, resignation, resentment, and anger. This evening I’ve come to certain, sad, conclusions about the dynamics of the student movement which have always existed as vague impressions lurking in the recesses of my optimistic (evidently too much so) mind. Before I’m silenced by a dismissive “Well, what did you expect…the student movement is ostensibly one which is trying to protect their interests as future actors with the discourse and logic of capital” – let’s consider the facts and the build-up to today.
Autumn 2009 saw a certain specific radical escalation in terms of this struggle, in ways which often made no material demands but instead struggled to physically actualize and articulate a space in which the logical of control and authority was effectively challenged. Many student radicals all over California, used occupation not merely as a means to draw attention to the fiscal crisis that our education system has found itself in – but rather, more ambitiously and in my opinion righteously, used the tactic of occupation as a means to (on a purely visceral and symbolic level) take back control of their individual experience of living within the totality of capitalist relations. The rhetoric surrounding many of the communiqués supports this, such texts released by various autonomous groups at Santa Cruz and Berkeley all were engaging in a discourse which made it evident that the radical milieu of the student movement was not thinking about fee hikes and budget cuts…but rather questioning the very institution of academia itself and its role in the maintenance of not only intellectual hegemony but also social construction in the broadest sense. Texts like “A Communique from an Absent Future” and materials put out by groups like La Ventana Collective (many of which have been anthologized in “After the Fall: Communiques from Occupied California” by the good folks at Little Black Cart) pointed to a serious engagement with current anarco-insurrectionary discourse. They’ve taken their cue from the Tarnac/ Invisible Committee folks, done their Situationist homework, and echoed, albeit in fresh new ways, the sentiments expressed in May ‘68. All this is a roundabout way of saying that there is indeed a radical contingent in the California student movement, and my problem with today/tonight was that this contingent was almost entirely absent from the “actions” in San Francisco.
The rally at civic center was organized to be “family-friendly” and was being touted as the central convergence point within the Bay Area. This obviously was the case as the turnout clearly surpassed the numbers in “demonstrations” elsewhere in the Bay. But for what this convergence had in numbers, it lacked in a radical contingency such as that seen in Oakland by several hundred folks occupying the freeway and causing gridlock for hours. Even the actions in Santa Cruz escalated to the point of genuine confrontation with police.
San Francisco let me down on this one.
At approximately 6:15 p.m. or so, just as the sun was starting to set a small march broke away from the mass rally at civic center quickly gaining numbers until a few hundred people were marching down Market St. right downtown. I had been desperately waiting for night to fall, to see what would enfold once we left the predictable monotony of the rally. My critiques of the majority of the marchers are no different from the general anarchist vs. liberal debates that plague almost every large demonstration from mobilizations against G20 summits to the recent anti-Olympic actions in Vancouver. There was a group (I’m assuming they were one as many of them wore matching shirts and situated themselves at the front of the march through downtown with their megaphones) which effectively hijacked control of the march, collaborated with police (by telling them where we were headed), and physically impeded individuals attempting to escalate and engage in more militant actions.
I don’t know who the fuck you all were or where you from, but please accept this most sincere and genuine FUCK YOU ALL.
It reminded me of the civilian pawns, “community arbiters” in their bright neon-green jackets during the Oscar Grant Rebellion last year in Oakland. The police have nothing to fear, when something as seemingly rhizomatic as a march, is policed by people within our own ranks who are saying they are our comrades. We were told by the “organizers” to stay only on one side of the road, not to march down one-way streets, and they physically stopped the march from crossing red lights. To add to all of this insanity, I saw someone pull a trashcan off the sidewalk into the street to impede the path of motorcycle police and one of these march hi-jackers went and picked up the trash can and replaced in its rightful place. Of course the generic, trite, idiotic chants were present and I found it most ironic that folks were chanting “Who's streets? Our streets!” while sticking to one side of the road and obeying all traffic laws as if we were one really long and loud human bus. Don’t define the nature and limits of our individual struggles, you don’t speak for all of us. A diversity of tactics was not, I repeat, NOT given space here to grow and actualize.
We walked through some of the most opulent and affluent displays of egregious wealth in the entire Bay Area – the Union Square area downtown. Multi-national corporations, all sorts of banking centers, the flagships of commodity consumption – and nothing. Nothing. A few hundred young individuals, angry (not enough), and nothing. To you liberal shits who will say, “Nothing? How can you say nothing! We marched through the streets peacefully for our cause(s)! We gained attention for X,Y,Z.” I say this to you…Within the physical realm, the realm of material day-to-day relations smashing the storefront of bank who received a bailout while your little college education keeps getting more expensive doesn’t accomplish anything. But it’s equally as stupid as marching on the right side of the street and collaborating with police thinking that you’re accomplishing something.
That said, the nature of a militant confrontation does accomplish this: smashing the window, burning the dumpster, confronting the authority of a hostile police force – does something ontologically. I am a firm believer that participating, experiencing, and fully engaging in explicitly transgressive social behavior such as a riot or black bloc demonstration both deconstructs and redefines one’s ontological relationship to authority. It is a level of empowerment that one cannot find through the general boring conduits of activism alone, it is something much more profound than this. It is a recognition that the relationship of subservience to dominance is not static, it can move, bend, and it is one which is purely contextual, subject to the will and desire of its actors.
The march eventually circled around back to Market Street and back to Civic Center. One of the march hijackers jumped on a pedestal (oddly poetic and perfect for their group’s self-aggrandizing posturing) and shouted on the megaphone, “Great job guys!” For a second I thought this hijacker was going to hand us all little gold-star stickers. No prolonged engagement, no discussion on what to do next, simply a mass dispersal. I shit you not, when I say that within 10 minutes a crowd of approximately 300 folks dissipated instaneously because of their deference to the authority of these march “organizers.” They said we’re done, so we must be done. Nothing else to do, let’s not talk about alternative strategies, lets just all pat each other on the backs, thank the cops, and go home and watch TV.
One friend in my affinity group remarked that this was, “The San Francisco Budget-Cuts Walkathon” and another, “Critical Mass without bikes” – and to be completely honest, that’s what the march felt like. Like we were all on a really large cross country team training for our next meet.
To conclude: Fuck you San Francisco, this East Bay kid should’ve stayed on his side of the bay today. Thanks to Oakland for saving face by taking the freeway! Hella nice kids, hella nice!
Final Score: Oakland 1 – San Francisco 0
For more information:
http://www.thehorizontalistpapers.blogspot...
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you're an anarcho-wanker. I got noting against direct action but those who think lighting up a dumpster on fire around a bunch of under 12 year olds is "revolutionary" needs to have their little brain examined.
This dolt doesn't speak for all anarchists. This putz did nothing but generalize and judge a whole mass of people and seperated himself because they don't act in the way he wishes.
well, anarchy boy...set the example...instead of talking...why didn't you make something happen?
you give a bad example of anarchism, you give it the mohawk, firebomb your store and knock over a trash can or two anarchy label that, thanks to you, has given the media and the general public, more than enough to brand the true anarchists as such.
go back and read the values and meaning of anarchism, you moron, unless your too busy bitching about what everybody else isn't doing or adding more patches and studs to your "gear"
your a fucking tool
well, anarchy boy...set the example...instead of talking...why didn't you make something happen?
you give a bad example of anarchism, you give it the mohawk, firebomb your store and knock over a trash can or two anarchy label that, thanks to you, has given the media and the general public, more than enough to brand the true anarchists as such.
go back and read the values and meaning of anarchism, you moron, unless your too busy bitching about what everybody else isn't doing or adding more patches and studs to your "gear"
your a fucking tool
This adrenaline seeker definitely doesn't speak for me. Can't call you an anarchist, think you might need some fucking education on what anarchism really is. SF 0, Oakland 1. REALLY? Are we fighting each other? Or fucking competing for coolest action? Grow the fuck up.
I stayed in SF yesterday because I fucking live here. I stayed at the action with families and kids in public school because I'm a school volunteer. I respected the tone of the group because those kids in the streets were fucking powerful.
I appreciate the actions in the East Bay and around the state. While I would have liked to have been on the overpass in Oakland, that action was 150 strong, and I belonged in SF.
If you have qualms about where you were, bitch at yourself, not the rest of us. I was proud to stand alongside kids from my neighborhood schools. Universities have an important place in this movement but so does K-12 and that will be a different strategy in the streets. K-12 should get to determine those strategies, and yesterday they did, with my support. I guess I've seen enough banner drops, occupations, and blockades to have found yesterday's baby blocs and other k-12 groups incredibly heartening. Maybe after you've been around the bloc a while you'll see that yesterday was amazing in SF as well as other places with direct action. You might realize that we're not going to have "the" revolution if only anarchists take the streets.
I stayed in SF yesterday because I fucking live here. I stayed at the action with families and kids in public school because I'm a school volunteer. I respected the tone of the group because those kids in the streets were fucking powerful.
I appreciate the actions in the East Bay and around the state. While I would have liked to have been on the overpass in Oakland, that action was 150 strong, and I belonged in SF.
If you have qualms about where you were, bitch at yourself, not the rest of us. I was proud to stand alongside kids from my neighborhood schools. Universities have an important place in this movement but so does K-12 and that will be a different strategy in the streets. K-12 should get to determine those strategies, and yesterday they did, with my support. I guess I've seen enough banner drops, occupations, and blockades to have found yesterday's baby blocs and other k-12 groups incredibly heartening. Maybe after you've been around the bloc a while you'll see that yesterday was amazing in SF as well as other places with direct action. You might realize that we're not going to have "the" revolution if only anarchists take the streets.
I love how the poster thinks that the only good action is a violent action. He only knows how to destroy and not to build. I am so proud of the fact that the protest did not spiral down into a mindless riot fulfilling the wet dream of a brain dead anarchist vomiting up cliches. His crys and complaints are like sweet honey, soothing and calming the soul, as the protesters rightfully thought about their actions and decided that the best course of action was to ignore the anarchist in their midst. Rationality=1 anarchist=0.
I think the HP Collective has some good points on tame marches to city hall, overly organized marches, and the controlling factor of whoever the people in the uniform t-shirts were. The poster should have found out who that group was so he could offer some analysis of their tactics, give us some history on them (oh sorry, you probably think there is no such thing as history, only geneology) so we could identify them and call them out during future organizing.
All this Tarnac, Foucault, Deleuze, and half assed misinterpreted Situationist referencing adds nothing but fringe and lace to your post, like a baroque window dressing for your post which amounts to fetishizing direct action and property destruction with no objectives, unless your goal is to enforce your "singularity" and "authenticity" by showing your bad ass credentials--- it's narcissistic.
This is a mere regurgitation of the Invisible Committees stupid insistence that there can be "no common language" from which our struggles emanate and develop. It's one thing to criticize party and organizational rigidity and its hindering tendencies on the rank and file, like say Rosa Luxemburg did in the Mass Strike, or CLR James did in his critiques of the Leninist vanguard party, but entirely a different thing to just tell us there is no class subject, as if we were now in a post proletarian world. We are not. Most people on the planet still have to sell their labor power to bosses, even the unemployed are within the logic of capitalist wage labor social relations.
You get angry anticipating that someone will attempt to dismiss students with the phrase “Well, what did you expect…the student movement is ostensibly one which is trying to protect their interests as future actors with the discourse and logic of capital” Certainly there are people who have attempted to define the students as somehow separate from workers, as elitist, non proletarian, and irrelevant. We know this is ludicrous, as something like 80% of students are workers, most of them in the full time range. We also know that historically, student revolts have often sparked, or coincided with, and merged with massive strikes, in Paris, South Korea, Tienanmen, to name a few.
But you are unaware that, while your post attempts so desparately to embody what you call “a serious engagement with current anarco-insurrectionary discourse,” that your source material really is rooted in the "discourse and logic of capital" via the University and your isolated academic pantheon of non-revolutionaries. Not to say that there is no worth to any of this, but you should be aware of the highly commodified nature of the theory, of the cultural turn to the Right, of the backlash against class struggle, of the conservatism within the university as embodied by post structuralist and post modernist theorists you idolize, represents.
We might cut you some slack, but your whole point of “fuck you San Francisco,” of the attempt to separate the two sides of the Bay, as if one were authentic and one was old hat, all based on a single lame march and a freeway shut down shows you really don’t want to think about the broader class struggle involved in the current attack on the working class, accelerated by the “crisis.”
Important to remember is that the SF State students were able to supersede the controlling grip of the Trot ISO when the students called for organizing not around some nebulous “action, or maybe a strike, or whatever” but towards definite and sustained strikes with an eye to connecting into broader resistance that could become a general strike. Meanwhile, the 10/24 organizing meeting at Berkeley was totally hijacked by the ISO and a coalition of Trot groups (liberals all, including the ISO), and union bureaucrats. That meeting was perhaps the most important brake on militancy in the whole lead up to March 4th. Does this mean “the East Bay” is lame? No. But it is one example of how your picture is reductionist and not helpful. Many of the conservative groups who were responsible for acting as a break on militancy also made sure not to include the 1:30 Civic Center rally in SF in their announcements, and instead only mentioned the later union sanctioned rally, the one that was organized undemocratically behind the backs of many SF agitators/organizers. The fact that you seem not to have known about the other aspects of the SF actions shows that you are pretty out of touch, more concerned with condemning entire groups of people from the safety of your currently hip post modernist position. It’s transparently trendy!
For a classless society, free education for all, and an end to waged labor!
All this Tarnac, Foucault, Deleuze, and half assed misinterpreted Situationist referencing adds nothing but fringe and lace to your post, like a baroque window dressing for your post which amounts to fetishizing direct action and property destruction with no objectives, unless your goal is to enforce your "singularity" and "authenticity" by showing your bad ass credentials--- it's narcissistic.
This is a mere regurgitation of the Invisible Committees stupid insistence that there can be "no common language" from which our struggles emanate and develop. It's one thing to criticize party and organizational rigidity and its hindering tendencies on the rank and file, like say Rosa Luxemburg did in the Mass Strike, or CLR James did in his critiques of the Leninist vanguard party, but entirely a different thing to just tell us there is no class subject, as if we were now in a post proletarian world. We are not. Most people on the planet still have to sell their labor power to bosses, even the unemployed are within the logic of capitalist wage labor social relations.
You get angry anticipating that someone will attempt to dismiss students with the phrase “Well, what did you expect…the student movement is ostensibly one which is trying to protect their interests as future actors with the discourse and logic of capital” Certainly there are people who have attempted to define the students as somehow separate from workers, as elitist, non proletarian, and irrelevant. We know this is ludicrous, as something like 80% of students are workers, most of them in the full time range. We also know that historically, student revolts have often sparked, or coincided with, and merged with massive strikes, in Paris, South Korea, Tienanmen, to name a few.
But you are unaware that, while your post attempts so desparately to embody what you call “a serious engagement with current anarco-insurrectionary discourse,” that your source material really is rooted in the "discourse and logic of capital" via the University and your isolated academic pantheon of non-revolutionaries. Not to say that there is no worth to any of this, but you should be aware of the highly commodified nature of the theory, of the cultural turn to the Right, of the backlash against class struggle, of the conservatism within the university as embodied by post structuralist and post modernist theorists you idolize, represents.
We might cut you some slack, but your whole point of “fuck you San Francisco,” of the attempt to separate the two sides of the Bay, as if one were authentic and one was old hat, all based on a single lame march and a freeway shut down shows you really don’t want to think about the broader class struggle involved in the current attack on the working class, accelerated by the “crisis.”
Important to remember is that the SF State students were able to supersede the controlling grip of the Trot ISO when the students called for organizing not around some nebulous “action, or maybe a strike, or whatever” but towards definite and sustained strikes with an eye to connecting into broader resistance that could become a general strike. Meanwhile, the 10/24 organizing meeting at Berkeley was totally hijacked by the ISO and a coalition of Trot groups (liberals all, including the ISO), and union bureaucrats. That meeting was perhaps the most important brake on militancy in the whole lead up to March 4th. Does this mean “the East Bay” is lame? No. But it is one example of how your picture is reductionist and not helpful. Many of the conservative groups who were responsible for acting as a break on militancy also made sure not to include the 1:30 Civic Center rally in SF in their announcements, and instead only mentioned the later union sanctioned rally, the one that was organized undemocratically behind the backs of many SF agitators/organizers. The fact that you seem not to have known about the other aspects of the SF actions shows that you are pretty out of touch, more concerned with condemning entire groups of people from the safety of your currently hip post modernist position. It’s transparently trendy!
For a classless society, free education for all, and an end to waged labor!
This fool doesn't care about any kind of revolution. He's in it for stunts, "genuine confrontation with the police." Wow, how bad-ass! Fuck you.
The Civic Center rally was the only event that introduced normal people to the movement. Maybe next time they'll bring their friends. Maybe when their friends are talking, they can discuss genuine strikes and revolutionary actions, instead of the joke the ultra-leftists dreamt was going to be March 4th.
The Civic Center rally was the only event that introduced normal people to the movement. Maybe next time they'll bring their friends. Maybe when their friends are talking, they can discuss genuine strikes and revolutionary actions, instead of the joke the ultra-leftists dreamt was going to be March 4th.
man, im really disappointed with your point of view (not the writing of your article, it was articulate)- but seriously man listen to what people are saying here. the score comparison thing was a real bad idea...
I was expecting clashes with the police in SF and looking forward to some civil disobedience but just cause that didnt happen doesnt mean it was a bad action. Theres no reason to fight with police if you dont have to. we shut down most of the schools, shut down the streets, no permit shit, and gathered a LOT of support (esp people from the sidelines joining). everyone I know radical and non-radical agrees and supports the protests and support is building.
The Day of Action was also VERY well organized in the sense that it stayed radical. Not the usual liberal crap you see on May day and such. The students are really ahead of the game, which is why I really have to disagree with what you're saying. The unions and teachers are also very on top of things. None of this was asking for a specific bill change, it was literally a solid FUCK YOU to the govt, the military, and the bankers. thats a very large leap from how things have been.
Don't be an idealist- work with the people and the movement here and help it grow. This was one of the largest and most solid protests in SF in a long time- and thats saying something.
I was expecting clashes with the police in SF and looking forward to some civil disobedience but just cause that didnt happen doesnt mean it was a bad action. Theres no reason to fight with police if you dont have to. we shut down most of the schools, shut down the streets, no permit shit, and gathered a LOT of support (esp people from the sidelines joining). everyone I know radical and non-radical agrees and supports the protests and support is building.
The Day of Action was also VERY well organized in the sense that it stayed radical. Not the usual liberal crap you see on May day and such. The students are really ahead of the game, which is why I really have to disagree with what you're saying. The unions and teachers are also very on top of things. None of this was asking for a specific bill change, it was literally a solid FUCK YOU to the govt, the military, and the bankers. thats a very large leap from how things have been.
Don't be an idealist- work with the people and the movement here and help it grow. This was one of the largest and most solid protests in SF in a long time- and thats saying something.
I think a lot of people were disappointed with the actions on March 4th, not just those in SF. What with the events leading up to the rallies, in Berkeley and elsewhere, I think we thought there was going to be a little more action, a little less talking. I know I did. I was at the Berkeley march and while it may have had a higher arrest count and a higher profile incident, I still considered it a disappointment since I consider freeway occupation a waste of time.
It was like we all expected the momentum to carry through the 4th but it sort of ground to a halt. But that doesn't mean the movement is dead. This fight is going to go on for a long time after this.
It was like we all expected the momentum to carry through the 4th but it sort of ground to a halt. But that doesn't mean the movement is dead. This fight is going to go on for a long time after this.
SAME SIDE: "If you have qualms about where you were, bitch at yourself, not the rest of us. I was proud to stand alongside kids from my neighborhood schools. Universities have an important place in this movement but so does K-12 and that will be a different strategy in the streets. K-12 should get to determine those strategies, and yesterday they did, with my support. I guess I've seen enough banner drops, occupations, and blockades to have found yesterday's baby blocs and other k-12 groups incredibly heartening. Maybe after you've been around the bloc a while you'll see that yesterday was amazing in SF as well as other places with direct action. You might realize that we're not going to have "the" revolution if only anarchists take the streets."
Right on, SAME SIDE. It's the vibrant power and realities under our noses that are the meat, the "action-alisticalicious trajectories of praxis." heh.
So to you, a "collective" of one, open up a bit, shut up a bit and I bet you might start to clue in to real militancy and possibility and get some perspective on adventurist militancy, what are often formulaically predetermined passion plays branded as "Insurrection."
Right on, SAME SIDE. It's the vibrant power and realities under our noses that are the meat, the "action-alisticalicious trajectories of praxis." heh.
So to you, a "collective" of one, open up a bit, shut up a bit and I bet you might start to clue in to real militancy and possibility and get some perspective on adventurist militancy, what are often formulaically predetermined passion plays branded as "Insurrection."
If it's spectacular print/pixel space (& riot porn) that matters, the real score would be:
MEDIA=1,000 MOVEMENT=0
MEDIA=1,000 MOVEMENT=0
I wasn't present for the breakaway march but I did hear later from some folks who kind of accidentally found themselves at the front of it, when people started moving forward from behind them.These are people without a long history of activism, just students getting involved for the first time. They were really excited by the breakaway. I don't think they had any intention of suppressing any radical potential in that breakaway. This is not to say that there weren't sectarians or liberals or whatever who had a thought-through plan to de-escalate that march, but just that for folks who haven't had the benefit of long-term engagement with organizing, it's a mistake to consider them some kind of enemy just because they do things in a less confrontational way than you'd like. We should acknowledge that it's generally easier to win the argument that we should all follow the law, listen to the police, march on the side of the street, or what have you, than it is to have the much deeper and difficult conversation about the need to fully disrupt business as usual. I don't htink we should blame people for not yet having had the benefit of that discussion.
Also, I hate those fucking t-shirts but most people who wear them have no clue of their association with vanguardism- they just look like cool t-shirts to most people.
Also, I hate those fucking t-shirts but most people who wear them have no clue of their association with vanguardism- they just look like cool t-shirts to most people.
The thing that i noticed which was awesome was that the breakaway from civic center began with the leaderless high school students who had taken over the steps of city hall for hours before. After following for a while, I decided not to continue marching with them because I didn't want my old-ass interpretation of what should happen next to interfere with their breakaway plan. Anyhow, I was stoked to be at the march and rally with my co-workers and our students. The kids and families from our school were stoked too!
Let's hear it for tiny moments of awesomeness.
Let's hear it for tiny moments of awesomeness.
I tell you, the anarchist movement of the bay area (if it can be called a movement) does nothing. I have being living here for years now and all I see on grassroots organizing is anything but the anarchists. I didn't saw one anarchist working with the schools to mobilize the parents, students and teachers for March 4th. That took a lot of work, but the anarchists aren't up to the challenge of actually having to work with 'the' people. All they do is to sit on their asses till people are mobilize for a protest, then they come to it with their egos all big and they act like a pack of 'too good to be with the others'. Then they wait to see if they can get away with something, a breakaway march or anything that they can claim to be the 'real radical protest' that they did.
I tell you, I am an anarchist but I have shame to say it so when I am doing community organizing in the bay area. Because of the behavior of the anarchists from here. And they have the balls to come up and write a critique of the protest??? Have the balls to say that these students who are out in the streets will study to just become part of the 'capitalist society' and therefore is not worth to do anything on this struggle?? Oh no, I am sorry, you are doing something. You sit on your ass while people work hard to organize and mobilize people for a protest and then you go there to 'observe' and write down this critique.... yeah you are doing amazing.
I have heard this bullshit talking from many anarchists about everything, even the war 'oh is not worth to fight the wars in Irak and Afghanistan because then you will end the war but the capitalist society will still exist'. Very easy to say so, you are not the one being bombed, you are not the one that had your relatives being captured by U.S. Army and taken to prison to be tortured. Same thing with the March 4th protests, most of the anarchists that I know in the bay area are all students (or have being students) and if they don't care about doing work with everybody else to fight the cuts is because they, or better saying, their parents, don't have any problem on paying a lot of money for their studies. That the jobs the unions are loosing they don't care to loose, is because they don't work on those positions.. Let me guess, IF they work, they probably work on a coop or some NGO or whatever is considered 'cool job'. Good when one has a choice, or don't care about how much money they are making because they don't need to support anyone but themselves (who always get some cash by daddy and mommy, no matter how much they will denied it and paint the portrait that 'they are poor').
I don't care about what you have to say about March 4th, I care about what you have done for the demands of March 4th. Before March 4th and after March 4th. And from that part I know that you haven't done anything, because I haven't seen anything except for the few actions here and there whenever there is something bigger organized by someone else.
Unity, Diversity and Respect is what you need to have to build a movement. If you can't do that, then you will end up writing critiques that won't do shit for anyone and be on the opposite side of the rest of us who can do that. Who can work with people that believes in different things than yourself but is fighting for the same cause. Or do you think that to build a movement you will only work with anarchists and everything will be done just like in your 'squat', 'house', 'coop' or any other 'anarchists bubble' you are coming from?? Wake up! You are so out of touch with the rest of the world. You act just as bad as the right wing with this behavior.
I tell you, I am an anarchist but I have shame to say it so when I am doing community organizing in the bay area. Because of the behavior of the anarchists from here. And they have the balls to come up and write a critique of the protest??? Have the balls to say that these students who are out in the streets will study to just become part of the 'capitalist society' and therefore is not worth to do anything on this struggle?? Oh no, I am sorry, you are doing something. You sit on your ass while people work hard to organize and mobilize people for a protest and then you go there to 'observe' and write down this critique.... yeah you are doing amazing.
I have heard this bullshit talking from many anarchists about everything, even the war 'oh is not worth to fight the wars in Irak and Afghanistan because then you will end the war but the capitalist society will still exist'. Very easy to say so, you are not the one being bombed, you are not the one that had your relatives being captured by U.S. Army and taken to prison to be tortured. Same thing with the March 4th protests, most of the anarchists that I know in the bay area are all students (or have being students) and if they don't care about doing work with everybody else to fight the cuts is because they, or better saying, their parents, don't have any problem on paying a lot of money for their studies. That the jobs the unions are loosing they don't care to loose, is because they don't work on those positions.. Let me guess, IF they work, they probably work on a coop or some NGO or whatever is considered 'cool job'. Good when one has a choice, or don't care about how much money they are making because they don't need to support anyone but themselves (who always get some cash by daddy and mommy, no matter how much they will denied it and paint the portrait that 'they are poor').
I don't care about what you have to say about March 4th, I care about what you have done for the demands of March 4th. Before March 4th and after March 4th. And from that part I know that you haven't done anything, because I haven't seen anything except for the few actions here and there whenever there is something bigger organized by someone else.
Unity, Diversity and Respect is what you need to have to build a movement. If you can't do that, then you will end up writing critiques that won't do shit for anyone and be on the opposite side of the rest of us who can do that. Who can work with people that believes in different things than yourself but is fighting for the same cause. Or do you think that to build a movement you will only work with anarchists and everything will be done just like in your 'squat', 'house', 'coop' or any other 'anarchists bubble' you are coming from?? Wake up! You are so out of touch with the rest of the world. You act just as bad as the right wing with this behavior.
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