-Caveat Lector- Replies to Glick's 'On Winning Hearts and Minds' ========================================================= From: Chuck0 <barf> Glick has some interesting things to say, but I think he fails to see the big picture. I think Shawn Ewald's account is much more perceptive and insightful. It seems that Glick wants to pin some blame on the Black Bloc, for an ulterior reason that isn't clear to me. What is instructive is the reaction of the local residents to the police brutality and the DIY "Wall of Shame." They fought back, like most working people choose to do in similar experiences. Others engaged in nonviolent mutual aid, sharing water hoses or their houses as temporary refuges from the gas. There was a *diversity* of responses, none of which had to be created via "training workshops" or protest camps. It was an organic resistance, which the world leaders hadn't counted on. What fools they were to locate a summit on "free trade" in a working class community. All of their scare tactics about the black bloc didn't work, although they seem to work on the pacifists and professional Leftists. What Dave Dellinger does is very admirable. If Glick and the others who adhere to a strict nonviolence code want to set an example, they should take some risks and sit their bodies down in front of the capitalist machine. I'd love to wake up one morning and hear that 15,000 nonviolent pacifists had blocked the entrances to the Pentagon or some military base. Until that happens, I'm going to dismiss [Glick's] criticisms ... as cheap words. Make it happen. Chuck0 ========================================================= Dear Ted, My name is Victoria Collier, I'm the editor of <http://www.votescam.com>http://www.votescam.<http://www.votescam.com>com I read with much appreciation your article about the need to examine non-violence and its role in the rising People's movement -- anti-corporate fascism, anti-globalism, pro-freedom, pro-democracy. There is no name for this movement, but it is growing quickly and spreading like a wild fire. The words that we use to fan the flames will very much affect the direction in which this fire burns, and what it burns! I agree with your views completely and hope that your words of peace and responsibility make the necessary rounds and are absorbed by activists who are currently refilling their molotov cocktails. Being effective is everything. Perhaps the People's movement initially drew international attention because of the violence in Seattle where the police were seen by many as the bad guys. But I think the cause has already suffered considerably due to the continuing and now uninteresting media coverage of the ubiquitous black-clad stone throwers. To the majority of people who only watch the major Networks for their news, the protests are now as predictably violent and uncannily similar in appearance to the endless skirmishes on the Gaza strip. The danger of this is obvious. The only hope to change the flow of this tendency toward violence lies with people like yourself and your ability to articulate respectfully the need for awareness of greater consequences, and a grasp of the big picture. I'd like to respond to a specific and extremely important, largely overlooked aspect of this movement that you mentioned in your article. You wrote: >Personally, I don't see "non-violence," non-violence alone, as a >potentially winning strategy. There is much more that we have to be >about, including the formation of an alternative to the Democrats and >Republicans, one which runs independent candidates and is grounded in >and accountable to grassroots, broadly-based social movements. Please take a moment to check out the website I listed above. There is information that you, as an effective spokesperson for many, should know as you continue on with the battle, and I am assuming at this point that you are unaware of it, as so many are. I believe, due to many years as a political activist and organizer involved with our elections system, that at the moment what you have stated above is an IMPOSSIBILITY. Running independent candidates grounded in accountable grass roots, broadly based social movements is an exercise in futility. Why? Because over the past thirty years, our elections system, from beginning to end, has been slowly taken over by private corporate interests, and they now control every aspect of the process, including the actual machinery used to count the votes. There is a wide body of information about this, and a rising movement opposing the corporate take-over of the elections, specifically the computerized vote count, but it is rising parallel to the anti-globalization movement. They have not yet branched out to reach each other. That will have to happen, inevitably, if we are really going to create the changes we need. At the moment I am one of the main spokespeople for this movement because my father and uncle wrote the most important book on this topic, "Votescam: The Stealing of America." Votescam was published 1992 and immediately banned by the major book chains, which you will no doubt recognize as a sign of its importance! Nevertheless it has been widely circulated by word of mouth and has sold tens of thousands of copies, and demand for the book is growing, I am excited to report. It documents the corporate take-over of our voting system and the rise of unverifiable, riggable computerized voting and how it is easily used to control elections for the benefit of those already in power. It also documents the rise of Voter News Service, the highly secretive and protected major media consortium that is drastically more powerful than most people understand. The media and the computer are now the two greatest threats to democracy and I state again that the time is coming when this understanding will have to be grasped and then voiced by the millions who are opposed to global corporate hegemony. You are absolutely correct, we cannot fight them with violence. We are out-gunned, and besides, that's not what we're here for. We're here to create a sane and livable and beautiful world. And it is my opinion that we must deal with reality, and not with fantasy. Though a utopian anarchist society with no government and no boundaries just might be the best thing for all life on earth, I cannot see it happening no matter how far I stretch my imagination. There are 6 billion people in the world and unless those numbers are drastically reduced by means I would not like to contemplate, this planet is going to be dealing with governments and boundaries for along time to come. What I can see is taking back our currently existing democratic system from the criminals who have infiltrated and harnessed it. And there is only one way to do this-- get them out of office. And there is only one way to do that-- through elections. As you might've noticed, we have not been able to do that for a long time. No matter how angry and outraged the citizen become, no matter how blatantly the politicians lie and cheat and steal, no matter how flagrantly they sell our national sovereignty to global financiers and undermine the foundations of the country and our economic and social infrastructure-- they just keep getting back into office to do it again! And we are told it's OUR fault! Someone keeps voting for them, right? Well, not necessarily. It is not, in fact, the citizens who are controlling the vote count. It is private, unaccountable corporations who program the voting software. Not even the elections supervisors can read the code. It has been this way for a long time, getting progressively worse over 30 years. Citizens have lost their Constitutional right to a fair and verifiable vote count and they have largely not even noticed. Most people assume there is some kind of accountability in the voting process. But the signs are clear--voter turn-out has fallen in direct proportion to the rise of computerized voting. And the feeling that new people with new thoughts can make any headway in Washington is functionally dead. That fact is, American government is dead. There is a foul, rotting smell about it. And yet we continue to pump billions of our taxes into the hulking corpse to keep the illusion alive. Why? Because most of us are not ready for a revolution. We can't afford one, and besides, we are not all anarchists. Many people in this country still think the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are documents that one should not dismiss so lightly. Many people fought and died to sustain this country. They do not want to fight and die to tear it down. We have but one hope, and that is to take back our vote. Until we control the mechanism of democracy, until we are in the drivers seat, we will never be able to steer this country away from the cliff it is speeding toward. I too have been to the protests, and I have spent years fighting for environmental issues and human rights causes. I am completely aware of what we stand to lose if we don't win. I have also spent years in the battle for citizen control over the democratic process and I know that we are just a few chess moves away from losing that battle already. There are over 400 bills moving through the states right now to push standardization of the computerized vote count down the throats of millions of Americans who simply don't know what they are about to lose. I write this in hope that you will take the time to learn more about it. The information in Votescam is vital to any well informed social movement. I am happy to talk with you about it at any time. Thank you again for your great article! Sincerely, Victoria Collier ========================================================= From: Norma J. F. Harrison I hope we're clear that Glick is either an agent or a washed up ex-something who wants us all to make nicey and put up with the impossible. He also wants us to find fault with ourselves. If Gandhi had not gotten in the way of the uprising in India 40 years earlier, the movement would have kicked the British out at a savings of perhaps 8 million lives. Glick is ruining his shrinking IPPN and related efforts. Black block, all of us, keep it up. We're doing great as well as we can. Norma ========================================================= From: Bagelhole1 Like you mention in your article, violence is what the agent provocateurs do. We should learn from that. Another point, how do we convince millions, etc? The answer is we need to make our movement very compelling and nonviolent of course. I have a suggestion for future nonviolence trainings: first, let me say, I resent nonviolence trainings because they are very superficial and not really helpful. Its like trying to learn a martial art in one lesson. I suggest it would be much more purposeful if instead at a nonviolence training everyone closed their eyes and started making sounds with the instruction try to harmonize, make it musical. I've had this experience twice. Once, at the Nevada Peace Test in a sweatlodge with Corbin H. the great Indian activist and leader, he had everyone doing that for hours in the heat and it sounded so beautiful the whole time, that it was magical and a bonding experience that is extremely compelling to participate in and all people would be warmly acknowledged as they joined, I should hope. And the other time at BurningMan about 6 years ago. We were riding in my 14' aluminum stepvan about 40 people inside and the roof filled also. The playa is a flat circle, 20 miles in diameter with nothing growing on it, anyway, I asked everyone to sing and they did singing like that all the way to the hot springs. Its very compelling you might imagine. Also, I suggest that there be along with everything else a proactive grassroots focus, like building a low-tech infrastructure to backup the vulnerable hightech infrastructure; like growing your own food, etc., we are aware of a cutting edge method called "vertical aquaponics" at www.bagelhole.org about sharing information about low-tech sustainable methods. Most Originally, Mofwoofoo Woofuaza ========================================================= -end- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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