Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 13:01:10 -0600
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespass-AT-toast.net>
Subject: Re: Eat your young



At 04:05 AM 1/23/00 -0800, Sara Smith wrote:
>It seems like you replied without really responding to what he said. For
>example, he pointed out that the anarchist movement was yanked back at
>least 10 years because of the property damage done in Seattle and this is
>how you replied:
>
>"What has your anarchist movement been doing for the past 10 years? I
>mean besides going to Utah Phillips concerts?."
>
>  I think this is a valid (and important) assertion seeing as the mass media
>has mostly distorted everything.

First, the boss media will *ALWAYS* distort everything, without the 
pro-active engagement with the symbols of global capital, the vast majority 
of the boss media would have done stories about how the demonstrators 
provoked the cops.  Whatever you think the story should have been will 
never be told by the boss media.


>  As far as I've noticed, they've mainly
>protrayed it as 'random and senseless' and as a bunch of people from out of
>state ruining beautiful downtown Seattle. Of course this is bullshit, but
>most people (the majority of people in this country), I'm sure, who get
>their information from the mass media think this. So, of course, it follows
>that they once again are reinforcing their stereotypes of anarchists --
>namely, as violent, bomb-throwing, chaos-loving people. If this doesn't
>help in setting the anarchist movement back in time, I don't know what
>does.

And we were so on the verge of mainstream acceptance.

>  Most people didn't understand why the property damage was done, and
>most certainly don't have negative opinions with regard to private
>property. Overall, I think the property damage done resulted in more bad
>than good.
>
>It not only alienated people in the mainstream of life, but also other
>progressives (many of whom would be the first to sway over to anarchism).

Actually, from what I've seen, Joe Sixpack on the assembly line understood 
and identified more with the property damage than the sea turtles, even 
though he might otherwise be all over the political spectrum.  As for 
progressives, I think it'd be easier to sway wrong-Libertarians to our 
economics than it would be to sway the rest of the left to our social 
structure (they're always so concerned with who'll do the 'shit jobs').

>Other organizers and demonstrators in Seattle were pissed because a few
>anarchists took advantage of the situation and, in doing so, helped to
>diminish the importance of the issues and the actions taken by them there
>in the eyes of many people. This is connected with the mass media, of
>course, since if they didn't report things like shit, there would've been
>no distortion, etc. and therefore no diminishing of the issues the
>demonstrators represented. We could hardly expect the mass media to portray
>the events as they should've been portrayed.

So, don't do anything that might give the boss media the wrong idea?

>At first I was for the property damage. I thought it sent a good message to
>the corporations that people wouldn't just stand idly by with a picket sign
>in protest against, or ignore all together, their labor and environmental
>abuses.

Damn straight it did.

>  While it did this a little, the fact that it tarnished the
>anarchist name in the eyes of many and alienated anarchists from the rest
>of the progressive community override any good effects totally.

We were tarnished and alienated already, we just weren't fully aware of it.


>I've also heard people say that maybe anarchists shouldn't be invited to
>this or that demonstration, because they were afraid they'd commit some
>property damage, and then the rest of the demonstrators *and* their message
>would be tarnished in the eyes of people passing by and reading about or
>watching it in the media.

That implies that there aren't frequently anarchists in the planning of 
many actions, which is false, but even so, so what?

>We should be promoting anarchism - not doing the opposite. Expecting a
>society that isn't very class-conscious to react positively in any way to
>property damage is, I think, a long shot.

I reacted positively to it, my non-authoritarian Marxist buddy at work 
reacted positively to it, non-political co-workers didn't react 
non-favorably to it, so who, other than the Left, reacted unpositively to 
it?  The media?  The upper middle class?  They're always going to react in 
a negative way to any change that isn't a feather in their caps.  So fuck 'em.

cheers,
Scott
---------------------------------------------------------
"No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and 
generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true 
education should be to unlock that treasure."
                                               -Emma Goldman

Piston Ported Vespas:
http://www.piston-ported.homepage.com
words
http://www.geocities.com/vespass/words.html
----------------------------------------------------------

HTML VERSION: