Thank you

I needed that.

(insert grin here) 

aMike

Max, all due respect, I think you need to get over yourself.

Todd Gitlin noted several weeks ago that Matt Stoller's piece about the netroots was met with a withering blast of boomer vanity. I think he was right.

Having participated in the netroots since early 2004, I don't believe that people like Kos think they invented participatory democracy. They have, however, clearly invented a new form of participatory democracy that has revolutionary potential.

Matt Stoller, Josh Marshall, and Markos, and many others are late 30 somethings. I get the sense that you have a problem with this. You are learned and I respect that. I wholeheartedly agree with your last observation that "[i]t's about the age-old struggle to push an amoral market system and corrupt political hierarchy towards a vision of social justice and human development."

Your sneering, however, is annoying. But perhaps you are engaging in an old tradition. Irving Howe and others from the Old Left often directed similar invective to the young guns of the New Left. I'm just not sure anyone gets it now.

Who knows...

I could make it another 25 - 30 years, and live to watch the 30 somethings of today sneer at the 10 -15 somethings of today talking about how irrelevant old geezers like those you mention are...and how vain the young turks of 2006 are in the eyes of the young turks of 2036

aMike

Was your generation's "fight" defined so concisely back then? Did you sit around and formulate a battle plan to fight for 'those left out of the middle class'? Or was your fight more of a reaction to address perceived problems?

I can't speak for the New Left or the Old Left or the Mid Left. However, this is what I think The Left is fighting for today:

- democracy
- alternative media
- civil rights for LGBT community

Today's Left is reacting against the lack of transparency in America's electoral process. Democracy is the core of our society, and yet we seem to be losing control of it. We're fighting against a corporate machine to regain confidence in our voting mechanisms.

Today's Left is reacting against the corporate takeover of traditional media. We're using technology to create a new battleground, and redefining the game. But this battleground requires a sharp mind, not an able body. This is a battleground where the best minds of The Left can set aside their age differences and use a combination of youthful vigor and experienced wisdom to work toward the goals we all share.

Today's Left is reacting against the disgusting homophobia entrenched in American society. The Old Left have fought for significant advances in civil rights over the last hundred years, and the New Left have shown a willingness to carry this torch for our LGBT family.

Today's battles are on the streets, however some of them are virtual. We don't necessarily all have to meet in front of Congress to make our voices heard. We don't have to meet in one physical location to raise large amounts of money overnight. The Left organizes on virtual streets just as often as they organized on physical streets forty years ago. However, the virtual streets can also accomodate the people who cannot travel, the people who only have a few dollars to pitch in.

Everybody from the golden girls to the golden child have a voice here in the New Left. If you have passion, if you have ideals, if you feel that a cause is underrepresented; then you can be a new source of inspiration for The Left. You can help provide that mentorship that is necessary for the Progressive movement to continue growing. But creating a partition between the young and the old drives away both.

Today there are people like Markos Moulitsas who think they've invented participatory democracy, since evidently they've never read the Port Huron Statement or Kirk Sale's SDS.

...not comic-book pseudonyms... ...tapping on keyboards...

Throw bombs much? Actually I'm not going to respond to that except for saying that Markos may not have invented participatory democracy but the Port Huron Statement sure as hell didn't either. Markos just helped make it 10 times easier to pull off. To be the fair though, I probably find the Port Huron statement as bellicose and pretentious as you find Crashing the Gate empty and I suppose non-leftist.

How many people realized THEY WERE NOT ALONE in thinking Iraq was a mistake or that liberals weren't evil? How many people volunteered because suddenly it was easy to get that information? How many people STILL volunteer? How many people even if they don't do anything else, now have the courage AND the knowledge on how to successfully fight the growth of right-wing culture in their daily lives because of what they've discussed on line?

As to the marches let me say what I wrote in EJ Graff's post. Marches don't matter because everyone knows the Left is not a threat. We don't generally believe in stocking up on guns, we generally DO believe in working to change the political process peacefully. Thus, the elites can let us run around and scream and reliably count on the press to ignore the marchers and that means the politicians can ignore them.

The only time that DOESN'T happen is when the marchers scare people. While I enjoyed watching the Seattle anarchy on TV (I admit it, I've always had a desire to loot stuff) the impression that they gave once people started paying attention after they got violent was "these people are dangerous!"

Same with the Immigrant marches. People saw it and they said to themselves "Oh Noes! 1,000,000 Darkies! Aiieee!" and that's why they got attention. But the response that usually provokes is not "maybe they're doing this for a reason" but "We need to stop these nut bars before they hurt somone! Or maybe me!"

I submit that while the 60s drew attention to a variety of problems white middle-class America would have rather closed its eyes to and started the ball rolling, that is not what is needed today. Because they're non-threatening people look at it, think about the issue maybe while it's going on and then promptly put it out of their mind. The only avenue that really remains is the takeover of the political process which I'd like to think we are doing. We've done a lot in 4 1/2 years.

We also are far less radical than the 60s New Left because again, the Backlash. But that's a different post.

Marches are great, but unless you start busting up store windows no one is going to pay much attention to you--and by that point the only attention that gets paid to you is negative. That doesn't mean you shouldn't march, but if we don't gather 10,000 strong in front of the White House don't think we're your lessers either.

Max:

I think we are also interested in what my pappy used to tell me, politics is the art of the possible. What I want to know is, where are the limits of the possible?

The "Internet Left" is a mostly brainless vacuum cleaner of donations for the Democratic Party.

Now I don't mind a large tent for all kinds within the Democratic Party but I don't cotton to the elite wing requiring the lesser have-nots of the party to sit second banana in the nose bleed section eating cold paper wrapped hotdogs and drinking warm flat soda while they sit in their corporate tent suite being fed filet mignon off $500 china plates and sipping Dom Perignon from Waterford crystal. Next... [Link]

One person's constitutionally protected right to their opinion is no more important, nor less important than another's constitutionally protected Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

Jury rules against Seattle in WTO trial

A federal jury found Tuesday that the city of Seattle violated the constitutional rights of 200 protesters who were arrested during a demonstration during the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999.

The jury found the city liable for violating the protesters' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure, but did not find a violation against their free speech rights under the First Amendment. [Link]

~OGD~

ps: "We must all be foolish at times--It is one of the conditions of liberty." --Walt Whitman

We have here a common right-wing take on politics -- the Left doesn't matter, Seattle was about riots.

You can assert the Left doesn't matter all you like, doesn't make it true. As for Seattle, what we had there was mass civil disobedience and the sideshow of some anarchists attacking Starbucks.

It's like brainless statements to the effect, 'SDS evolved into the bomb-throwing Weathermen.'

- democracy
- alternative media
- civil rights for LGBT community

You need to pay more attention. The left is about other things too. Organizing on the ground has focused on the living wage, unionization, and anti-WalMart, for instance.

Old Left, New Left, Current Left, pro-60s, anti-60s. This refighting of old battles is fun in a self-indulgent way but that was then. This is now. And Now sucks. What are we (that's EVERYONE who isn't a Bush-Cheney stooge) going to do about it?

also: saving the working social insurance structure the even older left put into place from privatizers; rebuilding the wall protecting civil liberties; reversing decades of increasing economic inequality, etc...

god, i hate myopia.

The problem with the socalled netroots movement is there is much talk, little action, and absolutely NO CHANGE. Democrats took congress, but have failed to reign in the fascist, - I mean imperialist - I mean unitary executive. The war in Iraq is a ghoushish costly, bloody, noendinsight horrorshow - that is ESCALATING, not diminishing in anyway.

Tony, I suspect you realize that you contradicted yourself there. I'm sure that's why you wrote that "but" in there after the "Democrats took congress."

Nonetheless, it's been one month since the Democrats took control of Congress. I'm sorry that they couldn't get in there and roll back the past six years of Bush's presidency in 30 days. I guess that really is the fault of the netroots--we'll work harder next time.

Will Durant said "the present is the past rolled up and ready for action."

So we learn from the past and act wisely to devise ways for all of us to work together to stop Bush.

Tom

Problem is the old battles and arguments are still going on, in the context of new but really old circumstances. If that's not too zen for you.

No sense of history at all. Every younger generation is less educated than the last. And Max comes from those who knew the old left and the new, those who knew why the old left were wringing their hands at the stupid fucking hippies. And these days the stupid fucking hippies are the model. The hippies weren't the activists, they were too busy getting stoned and watching themselves in the mirror. These days the hippies are the activists, looking at the mirror and calling for revolution. "Bring me Liberalism! Bring me what I want. Bring me my ipod. BILL CLINTON WAS KOOL!."
Amanda the proud martini swilling urban sophisticate [her words] out to crush the stupid reactionary "godbag" peasants. This is left-wing politics? No it's teenage self-indulgence and bourgeois the core.

Give it up Max. They're doing some good, even if it's less than they think. Politics is compromise. But no, we're going into Iran anyway. Blame the republicans and the netroots and the rest of the population of this stupid country when its over and we're dead.

But let's remeber that "electorate" is not a synonym for "Citizenry". Bush received 53 million votes in 2004. That about 1/6 the population of this country. Even setting aside minors and non-citizens, that's still far less than a majority.

Yes, indeed. More importantly, let's never forget that of the voting electorate, more people  also voted against Bush than any other President in the history of our nation.

But for a variety of reasons the anarchy BECAME the story. Looking back, in general history it IS about the riots. What was actually true is relevant to a subset of people. It's pretty much cannon on the Left both off and online that Free Trade is code for "Economic Rape" (and it almost always is) but how much did Seattle have to do with that realization?

I'll say this about marches, they can be a clarifying event for the people involved and give them renewed purpose to go out and fight for change.

Now, where do I say the Left doesn't matter?

That there was a Backlash doesn't diminish the work of the 60s New Left that is DIRECTLY responsible for my arguing with you today. My parents, very poor hispanics, went to university on scholarships that were an outgrowth of those ideals, to deny the efficacy of the movement that was New Left is to deny historical truth. That the New Left was badly injured by Regan and what became the Christianist Right after it was abandoned by the establishment doesn't make their contribution any less. But because we're not taking it to the streets and getting sprayed with water hoses now doesn't mean we're somehow inferior to the lefties of the 60s.

Seth, you are factually incorrect.

It's not the best wikipedia article, but it should be good enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wto_protests

Mass (or even small) demonstrations worked in the sixities because the mass media operated differently then. If a 100 dirty f'ing hippies (and I mean that as a compliment) gathered at city hall in downtown L.A. to protest the Vietnam War in 1967, it had a decent chances of getting air play - 500 marchers might even have led the local news.

Contrast that with Feb. 15, 2003, when 750,000 marchers hit London, 400,000 marchers in NY, 200,000 in San Francisco, and 8 million around the world, all protesting the impending invasion of Iraq. It was news everywhere in the world except here where we have corporate controlled media. It was barely mentioned at all.

The reason protests don't work at changing opinions anymore is because the media doesn't want them to work anymore. The Seattle protests actually reinforce this point. It was the police that caused the problems. Not the dirty f'ing hippies. The media made the protestors into bad guys and were able to completely change the dynamics of the conversation. Suddenly it was no longer about the merits of globalization, but rather how ill-mannered those anti-globalization fanatics are. Gosh, you don't want to be like them, do you?

In my opinion, demonstrations need to become more like workshops and less like rallies, because where they do work is in the human connections that they build.

MNPundit suggests:

But for a variety of reasons the anarchy BECAME the story. Looking back, in general history it IS about the riots.  

I suggest that the primary reason was the storytellers, particularly the televised narrative.  Some of this was purely nefarious manipulation by the usual guilty culprits.  Some of this was, I think, built into the very genes of televised narrative itself.  In the late '50s (the dark ages of television) I wangled (thanks, dad) a job at KSTP, at that time the local NBC outlet in the twin cities.  One of my jobs was to pull still photographs off an easel standing just out of sight as the newscaster on the 6:00 p.m. news read the story from behind a desk.  No live feeds in those days.  (I could tell you what the newscaster wore below the sight line -- coat and tie above, of course --but I'll preserve a dignified silence about that). 

Now, of course, hardly a day passes without some local "reporter" finishing with the tag line, ____ reporting from the (insert name of disaster here).  I put "reporter" in quotes, because the news cycle and the need for drama to capture the 15 second attention span of the viewing public largely means that these photogenic folks largely have no intellectual context for what they present, no time to acquire any, and besides, who wants to listen to someone who knows something anyway?  (The recent Boston Fiasco is a case in point).  So the story becomes the violence (if there is any--if not maybe we can find some) and the anarchy (because it looks exciting), and thus the story is formed. 

I don't believe the solution to this is to let foreknowledge that the storytellers are going to pervert the narrative govern what one does...not entirely.  I think, too, that those who wish to exercise street speech need to recognize how much discipline, how much training, how much willingness to absorb bruises and bumps in the name of nonviolence went into the most effective examples of street speech...whatever decade.  King knew how to do it.  So did Thoreau.

One personal note.  I did learn something from the Seattle confrontations which changed my personal behavior. . .I couldn't begin to tell you how or by what source, but since those days this Minnesota born Swede only drinks coffee certified organic, shade-grown, by cooperative farmers earning a living wage.  I pay the extra buck or two gladly.  I learned the same lesson about produce during Cesar Chavez's glory days.

aMike

A last word.  I have to believe it won't be the "general history" much longer.  Give it 50+ years and the good historians will set the record straight.

And another fiction:  it was all middle-class white college kids.  It wasn't all middle class, it wasn't all white, and it wasn't all college kids.   All the rest is pretty accurate.  :-)  

Some around here may remember Dr. Benjamin Spock, at one time the most famous pediatrician in the world.  (Perhaps he is, for all I know).  In the mid 1960s he was on the faculty of the Western Reserve University Medical School, which is where I met him very casually in the graduate school refectory a few times.  Spock was in his mid 60's then.  He'd been an activist, along with others of his age such as Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.  Spock was at the meetings with us, sometimes speaking sometimes not.  He marched, he wrote, he protested, he was tried for conspiracy, and he went to jail.  He was 38 years older than I was.  Pauling was 40 years older.  We youngsters were flexing our political muscles for the first time, and of course it felt marvelous to begin to think that we perhaps had some power to change things.  But I don't remember any of us suggesting that the Spocks, and Paulings, the William Sloan Coffins and others a generation or two ahead of us should go sit on the front porch and rock a spell.  We needed them and wished there were more of them.

Sometimes I think this whole generational thing is a cosmic hoax.  The argument about precisely when/where generational shifts happen is evidence of this point.  What exists are moral, mental, and intellectual chains of thought and action which bind history more or less seamlessly.  Pianists today can trace the pedagogy which produced them back to Beethoven and before, as can the great world's conductors.  I suspect the movement leaders could create similar genealogies.

aMike

Re: I suggest that the primary reason was the storytellers, particularly the televised narrative.

But even more than that it just human nature to focus on the most extreme, the most radical and certainly the most violent. That was true back in the Civil Rights era when it was riots in the inner cities that people focused on; during the Vietnam protests when the Weather Underground and other violent groups were the center of attention, and, going way back, it was true of the abolitionist movement, John Brown over calm and rational people whose names were barely recorded. So if you are going to have a protest movement, for god's sake either corral or simply exclude the crazies. Else the story will be about them, not the issue you want to protest.

Re: There really isn't a large portion of the "citizenry" that disagrees with Bush and is disenfranchised.

I think it would be more accurate to say that there's a huge fraction of the citizenry (including many who do vote) that are fundamentally too ignorant of the facts to make an informed judgment. I recall seeing a poll where a shockingly large number of people were simply clueless about what sorts of things Bush stood for or would work for-- they chose things like "universal healthcare" and "subsidized college tuition" and even (!) "gay rights". Now you can try to blame that on the media, but I don't think that flies: no one who pays even cursory attention to the news would think Bush favored the things I just listed. Indeed, the problem is that these people do NOT pay attention to the news. Instead they simply adopt a politician by some inner and rather myserious criterion (it isn't sex appeal or anything obvious like that) and then deck him without whatever things they themselves favor, even if it turns him into the mirror image of what he really stands for.

My post was substantive, and all you're doing is leeching out the content and making it personal. It's not personal . . . it's just business.

(This comment was not in response to Seth.)

Can't speak for anyone else but I never thought so.

Also, are Graff et al. arguing that the netroots are LESS white and middle-class than 60s activists?

While I agree with your point, I don't know if a larger percentage of the "citizenry" had voted the outcome would have been any different. There really isn't a large portion of the "citizenry" that disagrees with Bush and is disenfranchised.

Excuse me if I misstated, I was refrerring to the voting electorate not the citizenry as you had nicely delineated. More people, (raw numbers not percents) who voted, voted against Bush than any other President in American history,

Conventional wisdom has been more voters=more Democrats elected, but given the past two presidential cycles saw record numbers in terms of turn out and a Republican was still elected, I am not sure that the conventional wisdom is correct.

Conventional wisdom did not calculate for voter fraud nor appointment of a US President by the US Supreme Court. I am not convinced that conventional wisdom is wrong in terms of more Democrats voting,.

Why else would they need to steal the election if conventional wisdom was so off?  It was a planned strategic manuever in two states in two elections, virtually the same tactics, in terms of the number of voting places open and ethnic areas impacted. You do not need that type of planning if more GOP voters were 'assumed' or  believed to come out to vote when the percent of the citizenry voting increases.

I have a little trouble believing this is still bouncing around. I've read E.J.'s original post, and I still can't for the life of me figure out why it's gotten people so exercised about it.

My sense is that you have an unwarranted, unprovoked and invalid criticism in terms of  effecting change in our democracy when Graf asserts that civil disobedience in the form of protests are no longer effective. Civil disobedience is a fundamental cornerstone in a democracy. It represents the will of the people.

The remark is considered even more inflammatory when that same generation fails to provide not even a better method to effect change but simply an effective one. Is it not insolent to castigate one generations effective methods of change within our democracy and yet have nothing to improve upon it? It raises the issue of whether it is the method or the will of the subsequent generations that has become irrelevant.

A cornerstone of democracy, civil disobedience, should not ever be considered irrelevant, 'tired/not fresh' or no longer useful by anyone who understands the power of the citizenry in a democracy. Civil disobedience is fundamental to civil liberties. Not to understand that condemns the society and future generations to government tyranny. As the people did not lose their power but were somehow convinced it was no longer useful or effective.

Count me as seeing this not as boomer vanity, but as boomer's wanting to defend their legacy.

It is not legacy, but democracy that is being defended. It does not take 'vanity' on the part of boomer's to assert that. Rather, it takes informed citizens who understand that being informed is the most crucial part of maintaining a democracy. Citizens have duties, responsibilities and obligations when it comes to upholding a democracy. So it is not about legacy rather it is about the democracy and the rule of law essential to it.

 Instead, they're about a nebulous "raising awareness," words that have come to have a tinny ring in my ear, because underlying that, the real purpose seems to be some sort of narcisistic street theater; the protest becomes more about the protesters than about a cause

Yes, it is about style not substance, show rather than know. All due to the lack of political will and courage of conviction. To do more than raise awareness requires taking a stand on the issue and having the moral courage of your convictions to within stand the consequences of it.  Theatre is play acting and so much easier because once the curtain falls you no longer have a role nor responsibility. The entertainers and athletes will not stand up and assert political will out of fear of capitalistic backlash, so the citizenry that 'raise awareness' with them capitulate to capitalist dreams as well rather than what is best for society vs. the greed of a few individuals.

True democracy requires a lot more work on a lot more fronts than just street protests, and while I think young progressive activists universally have a lot of respect for previous generations of activists, we're also getting damn tired of being told we're doing it wrong.

You're right true democracy is work, get at it. I would love to see that anger channeled into effective change....don't get mad...get even. We will all be glad to recognize that achievement...we need it!

The bad part of Seattle '99 was masked anarchists(?) whose sole reason for being there was to physically destroy storefronts, etc., whether or not it had anything to do with their stated cause.

But I didn't see any masks during the '60s and '70s, and demonstrations then caused very little destruction. What destruction there was was typically incidental, like temporary fences or news network' cars, or reactive, as when a few police cars were burned when the crowd reacted to police going overboard.

My guess is you were not there in the '60s and '70s, so any statements you make about their efficacy are purely conjectural. Those who were there know what happened.

And civil disobedience often includes getting arrested. If you doubt this, explain how you would be effectively civilly disobedient and also explain why Ghandi and King and Mandela were twits.

as boomers wanting to defend their legacy

 

the real purpose seems to be some sort of narcisistic street theater

 it is in fact possible that the politics, the messages, and the methods used in the 60s were not, as many of us grew up believeing, the be-all and end-all of how leftist organizing and resistance has to happen.

Historical masturbation about SDS or the Weathermen or whatever isn't going to cut it.

This refighting of old battles is fun in a self-indulgent way 

Whoaa. There's something going on here. All this exaggeration and all these straw men, this snark and cynicism. Yeah, it really makes ya wonder don't it Ollie?   

The 60's was the last time a large segment of the middle class in this country fought or even pretended to fight for anything other than it's own privileges. These days the American middle class dedicates itself to itself and calls it politics. These days, they call it liberalism. In the 80's they called it something else.

Max would like more. I'd settle for self-knowledge, but I doubt even that's gonna happen. The American middle class is not the world, and until Americans figure that out our politics will remain somewhere behind Berlusconi's Italy in the eyes of the rest of the population of the planet; with the added awareness that since Americans think they are the world, and have a lot of bombs, the rest of the world is left to worry.

Max is trying to remind people that in the 60's not everyone was navel-gazing. But since most of those he's talking to are the children of the navel-gazers and behave just like their parents what's the point?
The most important most useful progressive actions to come out of the 60's were lead by the religious and socially conservative black middle class, with some white people following behind them. Most of you assholes are descendants of the hippies, who were watching the Flintstones in 1962. Navel gazing.

I have really have no patience with this shit. Neither do most Europeans, most South Americans or most Asians; except those under 25 who if they could would model their lives after yours. A depressing thought.

Re; These days the American middle class dedicates itself to itself and calls it politics.

These days the American middle class is besieged in ways that it was not 35 years ago. Let's not forget that. Again, visit Elizabeth Warren's area of this site for the details. So of cousre the middle class is concerned about its own survival. Nothing wrong with that, any more than there was something wrong with 60's young men demonstrating against the draft or Blacks demonstrating for civil rights.

I ranked this high in this context.

DFX remarks

I can't speak for the New Left or the Old Left or the Mid Left. However, this is what I think The Left is fighting for today:

- democracy
- alternative media
- civil rights for LGBT community

I think it fair to say that these are what the left fought for in the 1960s as well.  I could cite at least one case in each of these categories for which we fought in the 1960s, and in some form or other, earlier radicals did so quite a while before that.  And I think we still fight for them.  After all, I'm posting this in the newest medium, aren't I?  And I've been a member here 1 year, 35 weeks, and counting.

I don't think these define the left, which has to be as much a matter of attitude toward what it means to be human as it is a set of programs.  On that point I'm in agreement with Mr. Sawicky.

Looking over all the responses, two things seem to pervade this entire conversation:

• First, that the Left is somehow a monolith...every protester is a window basher and everyone went to Seattle with the express purpose of smashing windows at Nike and Starbucks.  Every protester in the 1960s was a dirty f*-ing hippie who, between riots was copulating in a weedy haze behind the nearest available hedge.   Uh. Uh.  Not so

• Second, that the battles of today are discreet battles from those battles fought in days of your.  That was then, this is now.  Not so, my friend, not so.  Or so it seems to me.  The great mistake of the left in the 1960s and 1970s was believing that it had "won" with the withdrawal from Vietnam and with court decisions declaring de facto segregation as invidious and de jure segregation.  Skirmishes kept happening (think South Boston and busing), but generally speaking too many people thought the war was by and large over, and they could go back to private lives and "get serious" about raising families, getting tenure, promotions, and living the good life.  So too many of us sat back relaxed, ridiculed Jimmy Carter for his accent and his 55 mph speed limit, and let the 80s happen.

The right NEVER thinks that way, NEVER.  Never EVER.  This is the only thing I admire about them...they're chess masters of the first caliber in a match with no time limits.  So out of desegregation comes white flight and re-segregation based on class.  Out of expanding the middle class comes a seduction which convinces the sons and daughters of working men and women that somehow a white collar is superior, and flattery convinces the new yuppie that while mom and dad may be quaint, everyone else's mom or dad can certainly be ridiculed a la Norman Lear's Archie and Edith.  The left laughed at All in the Family.  The right may have laughed where nobody could see them, but they used the show to alienate blue collar workers and create Reagan Democrats. 

It took some of us twenty years to wake up and see what had happened to America in our longish slumber.  We were good citizens then (I should immediately switch to I, as it is myself I'm talking about), we voted, we even voted for things which cost us a few bucks--bonds for new schools and the like.  But we didn't pay a lot of attention to the public sphere because we were so fixated on the private sphere. 

I think a lot of us woke up with the attempted impeachment of Clinton.  Bush surely has kept us awake...he grates on every sensibility I have the way mainlining caffeine would grate on my nervous system.  Iraq has me fiercely angry.  I've put more funds into campaign coffers since 2003 than I had in the 25 years previous.  I want the war over, period.  I want Bush out, period.  But I'm surely wiser than I was 30 years ago.  When those things happen I won't think I've won.  I hope the young ones -- amazing how long we try to stretch that category to include ourselves, isn't it?-- don't make the mistake the left did after its earlier "victory".

aMike

"Passion" has a few meanings. Which meaning do you mean?

I can't find fault with any of those issues, but I think you may be making one of the mistakes liberal boomers did in not tying your issues to the lives of what they used to call "the silent majority".

The challenge in challenging a regime which thinks it has a corner on being American is in achieving unity while exemplifying a freedom of individual expressions and purposes in democracy that is anti-thetical to the monolithic regime-think you are challenging. Otherwise, like Bono sang, "You become a monster so the monster will not break you . . " and by that I mean you become or give in to a political thing or machine instead of being a human being to deal with political things and machines others have become to rule.

Democracy has the inherently unpleasant risk of not appealing to people who would rather not go to the work of being free. That is the primary temptation to abandon democracy, or live out some parallel to the vanguard of the proletariat with regard to the sluggards of democracy. On a foreign policy level, this is what the Neocons seem to be doing: forcing what is good for the world on the world. They are the Vanguard of Democracy, they think.

Another risk theme: someone masterful enough to pull off a democratic movement that leads to the spread of democracy in practice and thought among the many falls prey to some horrific personal hypocrisy and anti-democracy elements use it to discredit democracy, and are temporarily successful.

Temporarily successful, even if it doesn't mean real success for the many, is all a movement needs to be during the temporary lifetime of those it pleases. Who is pleased and who is not? Why? How much of these differences are psychological and behavioral? What differences among us are matters of taste versus matters of substance or freedom?

Where is the research that backs up your claim that demonstrations don't convince bystanders to join up?

Tom

msawicky said:

You need to pay more attention. The left is about other things too. Organizing on the ground has focused on the living wage, unionization, and anti-WalMart, for instance.

I need to pay more attention because I didn't provide a list that referenced everything the Left is "about"? What about environmental protections? That's not on your list. Are you paying enough attention? I apologize that I didn't provide a detailed list of every single cause that the Left is "about".

I apologize that I spend ten hours a day writing computer code and not studying the history of the Left. If you can provide me an entire history of the Left's battles, then I can work with you to write a computer application that can do something with that information. We can combine our talents instead of looking for deficiencies in each other's educational knowledgebase and/or internet comments.

bluebell said:

I can't find fault with any of those issues, but I think you may be making one of the mistakes liberal boomers did in not tying your issues to the lives of what they used to call "the silent majority".

That's a fair point, but I would argue that advocating for a legitimate, transparent election process is directly tied to the lives of "the silent majority". Even though I didn't pay enough attention and include environmental protection in my list, that is something the Left is fighting for and it does impact "the silent majority".

However, I listed issues that are very important to myself or those close to me. On some level, I don't care if I only speak for myself or if I am speaking for the silent majority of the country. I realize that might not be the reply that will help us triangulate a Dem White House in '08, but speaking up for those issues in my Red State home makes me feel that I am "fighting the good fight". The rest of the country can catch up whenever they are ready...

amike said:

I think it fair to say that these are what the left fought for in the 1960s as well.

That's a fair point. However, I think you can look at bluebell's initial comment in this thread and argue that today's Left is still fighting for the battered Middle Class. Today's Left is building upon those successes, failures, and lessons. We are advocating for equitable salaries, secure compensation, and a viable retirement in our future. With respect to Social Security, we are fighting for an institution critical to the survival of the Middle Class.

The Clinton impeachment was written in the second chapter of my political life, and it may be why I will be a Dem for life. I certainly agree with points made in your comments. Thanks.
____________________________________________

It's true that people my age and younger were born into a world where some of the initial battles had already been won. I didn't live through the American civil rights movement of the 60's. I didn't live in an America when women couldn't vote. I didn't live in an America that protested the Vietnam War. I can't apologize for that, and I'd rather not be castigated by the Elder Council of the Left for it. Let's move forward and work together and fight for the causes that we can all find common ground.

"My position has always been that street protests are an extremely ineffectual method of realizing political change."

You can repeat this assertion forever, that will not make it true. History shows otherwise, and there is no reason to argue this point further.

"Protests in Seattle did not help the anti-globalization groups advance their political goals."

You merely assume that the bad acts committed there (and there were plenty) prevented the message from propagating outward. Even if you are correct, that is no reason to condemn street action generally, and in fact subsequent anti-WTO demonstrations were without the anarchic rampages shown in Seattle (not just because the police showed up in force, but also because the bad actors didn't try for a repeat).

"Kids who go to a protest and then get arrested for trespass, or blocking traffic, or refusing to follow a lawful order, or any other minor misdemeanor are patently not involved in civil disobedience."

You would let the reaction of the police define the protesters' motivations, and the scope of their protest, for you. Your sweeping, undiscriminating statement is just what the police want from you-- they are appealing to the authoritarian personality in all of us-- and you are answering, "Yes, sir!"

Civilly disobedient protest does not lie only against unjust laws, but also against unjust acts of the government, even those purportedly taken under existing law.

Finally, freedom of expression is a political virtue unto itself, and laws, or their wrongful application, which unduly restrict it have been found by the courts to be unconstitutional, which qualifies them to me, at least, as "unjust." So, for instance, bad-faith use of "blocking traffic" laws is itself unjust and says more about the police repression of the right to protest than it says about the motivation of the protesters. The goals of the police were arrest, followed by artificially prolonged detention, to prevent and snuff protest.

Hundreds of protesters arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention were held for up to six times longer than those arrested on charges unrelated to the convention, according to New York City documents made public Thursday.

More than 1,800 people were arrested at the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where U.S. President George W. Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term in office.

* * *

A judge last month rejected the city's effort to keep secret most of the files and videotapes documenting the arrests, leading to their release.

* * *

"During the convention, you got to a judge much faster if you were a bank robber than if you were charged with parading without a permit," he said.

Instead of issuing summonses — similar to traffic tickets — police held everyone who was arrested for later court appearances. The concern, according to police Chief John J. Colgan, was the need to positively identify everyone arrested.

Records show that arrested protesters on Aug. 31, 2004, were held an average of 32 hours before appearing in court, while those arrested on other offenses were held less than five hours.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/08/america/NA-GEN-US-Convention-Arrests.php

"the anarchy BECAME the story. Looking back, in general history it IS about the riots"

The Third Ministerial Conference of the WTO was held in Seattle this weekend without event. As it proceeded in effectively dismantling barriers to trade and investment many protesters orderly assembled outside in a single file line to voice their opposition. Paul Krugman was on hand to denounce them as the backwards isolationists that they are, adding, "Out of their arrogance and unbridled ignorance they wish to deny poor people the same opportunities they themselves have enjoyed." Thomas Friedman, meanwhile, shared an amusing anecdote in which his Eastern European taxi driver compared the length of the line to those he'd seen under Soviet rule...

Doesn't quite pique the curiousity the same as an old fashioned police riot.

the sad conclusion I've come to is that many modern day street protests are not about adovcating a cause, demonstrating support for a movement, building community, or communicating dissent, which is what I think they should be about. Instead, they're about a nebulous "raising awareness"

Protesters in "protests ranging from the School of Americas protest to Seattle to various much smaller ones protesting unfair anti-labor/anti-immigrant practices" do all these unglamorous things, just like they did in 60s. By aquaintance, same as you, everybody I know involved in said actions were already doing all this, and protesting was just what they did with a day off.

I don't know of any statistical basis upon which one can candidly say it's on a lesser scale now than then, but if you want to make that argument then subjective eulogizing doesn't make it. Hell, it's often the same people putting together protests now as in the 70s, or did you miss all the flack anti-war protest organizers got for being a bunch of Vietnam-era commies. Somebody's going to do it, maybe everybody else was too busy doing exactly what you want them to do.

The government response to protests has been consistent: to make protest itelf seem irresponsible and immoral; the use of preventative detention and other more violently authoritarian tactics.

I am not part of the government and I think protest is irresponsible and immoral. While you are out in the streets someone else is robbing your house. Or to not be metaphorical, what is more scary to, using your construction, an evil government type 1) a person in the streets or 2) a person working hard to unseat that evil government type by participating in local politics in an effective manner.

I know you want to say that person 1 is more scary. But history, and logic, dictate that person 2 is the real threat to anyone in power. The 1960s are the perfect example, the left hit the streets and the right went to church. Both were organizing, but only one consistently elected presidents.

Honestly, if I ever wanted to be an elected left winger, I should encourage your behavior because it gives me something to triangulate against, but then I would have to want to run for office.

What's it explain, Seth?

First, I support, and acutally participate in the socalled netroots movement. The divide is in the seperation or divorcement from "the old Lefts" street movements viability, which I view as counter productive. We all seek the same ends. The primary difference lies in two critical assumptions. One that there exists in America any such thing as a healthy democracy. Granted we all agree that in a healthy democracy diverse dicsussion, discources, and debate does as General Pace recently stated "strengthen America". Democracy is based on the freedom of a wide array of constituencies to voice concerns and solutions.

The problem is - we do not live in a healthy democracy, and there is no such thing under the despotic tyranny of the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government as discussion, or discourse or, debate. The fascsts in the Bush government are the deciders, and if the American people or Congress dares to question or challengs any policy or ideology of the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government - they are ruthlessly slime as anti-American, unpatriotic, lunatic, communist, conspiratorial, effete, spawn of the devil, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, - so in truth, and in factbasedreality - there is no debate, discourse, or discussion under the tyranny of the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government.

The second problem is the majority of Americans are somnabulant. Blind, ignorant, ill informed, apathetic, and more interested in whiskey, sexy, rock n roll, than the many crisis that are actually affecting their own lives and the lives of thei children.

This somnabulance allows "netrooters" to imagine they are affecting change, - when in fact absolutely no change is actually occuring.

Any congressional laws conflicting with the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush govrernment's machinations and wanton profiteering is quickly superceded and rendered moot, and/or countermanded by "signing statement."

In shott NOTHING CHANGES!!!!!!!

In these times, when there is no viable option within the political system to affect change, - talk is no longer relative or effective.

Actions and deeds define our nation, our society, our community, our church, our families, and our selves.

We either win or loose on the basis of ths thread is winning.

The truth will set you free.

Yeah, Seth, what does it explain? Nothing. I, too, write code 10 hours a day, and yet, strange though it may seem, I am in basic agreement with Max and somehwat in disagreement with my fellow coder on what's being overlooked in politics by the "netroots".

Of course, it might help that in an earlier time I participated in many of the fights that Max still wants to declare the relevance of, so I'm not someone whose life experience is defined by writing code.

But there you have it.

"Unjust acts of the government." The government was not running any of the abortion clinics that have recently been attacked, AFAIK. An example of an unjust act of the government is illegally restricting the right of free speech in connection with, say, a Republican convention.

And "civilly disobedient protest" of course does not include setting off bombs-- if you can produce any respectable authority to the contrary I would be glad to see it.

Finally, "typically low level misdemeanants get bumped for upper level crimes in terms of who gets before a judge anyway. Judges would rather release a low level misdemeanant on habeas grounds than release a more dangerous criminal."

Is this your experience as a lawyer or as an arrestee? I doubt it, this is just plain false.

The Government may not be running abortion clinics but the government unjustly allows them to continue operating, or unjustly refuses to close them down.

Is this your experience as a lawyer or as an arrestee? I doubt it, this is just plain false.

No, it comes from my experience working as a low level court clerk in which I helped judges set their dockets, and then lugged the files to their courtrooms, stamped some things, and repeated that process every day for nearly for 2 and a half years. Ah, I can still smell the file room.

Sorry that the judicial bureaucracy doesn't view the arrest of a protester as important as that protester views their own arrest.

Further if you have a judge set on say a petty misdemeanor docket, and you only have one judge on that docket, and normally that judge can handle the workload, when you all of a sudden have 300 more cases than normal things get backed up. Of course you will probably say that the judiciary should then assign more judges to handle the protesters cases, but first reread the sentence above this paragraph, and second most judiciaries don't have the resources to assign more judges.

Then again, when was the last time that a protest group organized itself enough for a local judicial election (redundant, because there really isn't any other kind) to elect a a protester friendly judge? Probably never because that type of political action would be alien to protest groups, which constitutes most of the reasons they are irrelevant.

While there is regulation, abortion is legal, as decided in Roe vs. Wade. What authority exists for what you seem to propose as a government responsibility:

The Government may not be running abortion clinics but the government unjustly allows them to continue operating, or unjustly refuses to close them down.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

You can repeat this assertion forever, that will not make it true. History shows otherwise, and there is no reason to argue this point further.

There's no evidence for the opposite proposition.

You merely assume that the bad acts committed there (and there were plenty) prevented the message from propagating outward. Even if you are correct, that is no reason to condemn street action generally, and in fact subsequent anti-WTO demonstrations were without the anarchic rampages shown in Seattle (not just because the police showed up in force, but also because the bad actors didn't try for a repeat).

No, Wigmar, I'm not assuming anything about the effect of the bad acts at the Seattle protests. What I am saying is that even if the protests had been perfectly peaceful or however you want to phrase it, they would not have affected the policy decisions of the people at the WTO meeting. The protests in Seattle did not, and subsequent protests at other WTO meetings have not.

You would let the reaction of the police define the protesters' motivations, and the scope of their protest, for you. Your sweeping, undiscriminating statement is just what the police want from you-- they are appealing to the authoritarian personality in all of us-- and you are answering, "Yes, sir!"

This doesn't make sense. Police arresting people who violate laws is not the "police defining the protesters motivations." I don't even know how that would work. Does the act of arresting someone allow a police officer to supernaturally transfer their mental states into the mind of a protester? Whatever, again, there are groups of people, mostly college students, who go to protests with the intent of being arrested in order to prove that they care--and not as part of a civil disobedience plan. I've seen them do it. I've met them. I've spoken with them. It's true.

A few come-lately comments on this debate:

There are a lot of different kinds of political events that happen in the streets: protests, rallies, demonstrations, civil disobedience, pickets, marches, revolts, strikes, riots and revolutions. It is unhelpful to the debate to throw out a generic, vague defense of the value of "going to the streets" without being specific about what kind of street action one is proposing.

Obviously there have been successful street actions in the history of the world. But if anyone argues in favor of some particular action, in some particular circumstances for some particular purpose, the burden is on them to make a plausible case about precisely how the proposed tactic will help achieve the desired purpose in the particular circumstances.

The main criticism of street action that has been offered is that many of these actions are very blunt, unsophisticated and uncontrollable communications tools, and that in the contemporary period there are usually more effective tools available for influencing public opinion, and the opinions and actions of key decision makers.

Several people have pointed out that the message in mass street events is often clouded by the fact that the crowd is diverse and uncontrollable, riven by conflicting agendas, and that some members of the crowd go wildly off message. Whether the discordant messages are provided by violent agitators, incoherent idiots, or by fringe exhibitionists with a narcissistic desire to attract attention to themselves, the fact is that there often are many such people present in mass events, and they end up blunting and muddying the effect of the action - or even having an effect on the intended audience that is directly contrary to the intent of the organizers.

One tired response to this charge is to claim, "if only the media would cooperate by staing on the message that we want them to stay on, we would be successful in our efforts." But that is not an adequate response. The media are going to report on whatever catches their interests, and on what they think will catch the interest of their readers, listeners and viewers. If some marchers trash or loot a store, or set fire to something, they are responsible for a violent civil disturbance and of course that is going to be reported. And in any case it is the reposibility of the activist to know the media they are dealing with and to control the message (at least if they really are serious about effecting change, rather than just acting out to satisfy their personal desires). If the proposed action is overly reliant on getting a "cooperative" response from the media, then different tactics should be chosen.

It is also no response to the criticisms to say that if the wrong message is received by the intended zudience, that is the fault of the ignorant audience. If the purpose of the action is political change, effected through the change of attitudes in some target audience, then it is the responsibility of the activist to understand and gauge the likely response of that audience to various types of displays.

The temperament on display here by some of the defenders of street action over the past few weeks indicates precisely the problem the critics have pointed out. Some of these people seem to be motivated by rage and passion to express their views in a self-indulgent, verbally aggressive way that might satisfy them personally, but is not very effective in changing the minds of people who disagree with them.

Of course, both street action and these agrressive argumentative displays may achieve desirable short term effects due to fear and intimidation, but those effects come at the cost of many negative externalities, and the failure to forge more enduring bonds of sympathy and solidarity cause long term harm.

They weren't rhetorical questions. I wanted you to provide answers to them. You know you cannot provide answers to them, so you call them rhetorical. Part of the reason you know you cannot provide answers to them is because if you do, you know you will contradict yourself. Recognizing this cognitive dissonance to be high, you instead decide to turtle into a bunch of links.

Please. answer my questions. If my answers are wrong, show me how they are wrong.

Just to make sure you know what you are saying, or more accurately standing by saying lets recap your points.

1)The Civil Rights Movement and the late 60s protests were the same thing
2) Members of the SDS died in the Civil Rights movement
3)The Religious left has had as great an influence on US presidential elections since the emergence of the New Left in the mid to late 1960s as the Religious Right has.
4) Kennedy and Johnson were elected by the New Left. (this is a great one, and frankly I am glad you stand by this one because it is logically, temporally, and ultimately factually wrong, of course you will say you never said this, but it holds through the logic of your statement.)

I miss anything?

Howard, Howard, don't you see? These guys only care about fetuses and embryos! To hell with them after they're born -- after all, if we don't punish their loose mothers by making them have their babies they'll never learn that sex is BAAAAAD. Too bad if they can't take care of them, THAT will show them the wages of sin.....they better not show up looking for help to feed them or keep those babies healthy, either.

But I digress...Especially to hell with them once they are 19 and in the army, with families, and hopes and dreams. They are fighting (and dying) THERE so we won't have to fight(and risk our cowardly asses) HERE!

Repeat after me: WEDGE ISSUE WEDGE ISSUE!

Remember it is ONLY the effect of the WEDGE ISSUES that makes non-wealthy people valuable to the GOP! The poor and the religious right can be manipulated and they will vote because they can be manipulated and that is why they will vote for the fear-mongers who manipulate them for their votes!

They still, (chuckle!) haven't figured out that the GOP is killing them with health care, with military service, with screwing the environment, with future debt to be paid by their very children. And, if they get their way -- with Social Security --> just one more beast to starve( everyone should manage his own portfolio, right? -- I'm sure Dubya manages his, so why shouldn't the lady who works at Taco Bell? If she makes some bad decisions her Dad will bail her out like Dubya's, right?)

Jan Knaus