We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, August 29, 2011

One Year After the G20 Protests: Forms of Protest Reflect Our Power

Click here to access article by Clarice Kuhling from New Socialist (Canada).


This article provides some excellent background on organized labor, its alienation from activist youth, and some excellent suggestions on how to bridge the gap by using more effective militant tactics in future confrontations with highly organized capital.
"Smashing shit up," then, is both an expression of this context and a direct reflection of the low level of struggle and resistance in labour unions and on the left.

...These tactics keep reappearing precisely because they represent a wholesale departure from the forms of passive politics and bureaucratically controlled resistance that have increasingly monopolized the political terrain of working-class struggle in the last half-century in both Canada and the US.