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Let me add some comments here. Like Ken, i'm on the US' Left Coast. This actually has significance vis-a-vis "Direct Actions", something that is part and parcel of actions here across the board, maybe no so much on the East Coast or Mid West, but the occupation of the State Capitol in Wisconsin is certainly a direct action if there ever was one. Our here, unions often engage in sit ins, traffic blocking, etc. HERE Local 2 is famous for this with *hundreds* of union members getting arrested with thousands more surrounding them and the cops. Ever since Delores Huerta, the 80 year old leader of the UFW had the shit beat out of here by SF SWAT in the mid-1980s, they basically "don't do that anymore" to peaceful demonstrators (she lost her spleen and had about 7 ribs broken by the pig that assaulted her). The recent budget cut battle that has been waged out here for the past 2 years has had many direct actions, some lead, in an isolated manner from the broader mass of students, but some...not so much. The main anarchist lead, but socialist left supported occupation in the fall of 2009 actually kicked started the movement. Out here, we can have 20 occupiers but 2,000 students and workers on the outside, galvanized around the demands of the movement, sparked by the occupiers (of any particular brand) by a 'synergy' between the illegal occupiers and the mass of students that is 100% supportable by mass action advocates, like myself and Ken. So it takes an effort to work with DA types, even the anarchists, to organize a successful action that includes, not excludes, the masses of people involved in the struggle. Generally it works or has. There are some exceptions but not worth going on about here. In London, I'm with those that see the Black Block types as playing the fool. I seen them more as being "pawns of the media" than "pawns of the cops" although either works. When you see *40* photographers snapping pictures of burning newspaper as it it's news, one has to wonder. At any rate, these creeps, IMO, have no place in a legitimate mass action. But it's conceivable than whole contingents of participants could of marched into a gov't office, or a bank, and occupied it, *peacefully* with the support of the mass of demonstrators on the outside. This would require something of a *democratic* decision making process by coalition and union forces, something these Black Block fools are politically opposed to and say so openly. They believe in the 'spontaneity of the masses' (meaning themselves) and they openly campaigned against democratic conferences electing leaderships to co-ordinate the struggles (at least the wannabe Black Blocks types). I'm not going to get into the debate about cops and infiltrators. That is not the issue, IMO. It's that they operate outside the movement, as parasites, *incapable* of actually organizing anyone outside their fake-affinity groups. In many ways they act as caricatures of the very things they claim to oppose 'vanguard Leninists' striving for leadership over the backs to the masses themselves. DW ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
