councilor.org
| Source | Carrol Cox |
| Date | 08/11/30/23:36 |
| > what constitutes a "movement"?
This is not as complicated as you think. A movement is visible in the streets, in the work places, door-to-door for the _issue_ not some person, petitions, building occupations. marches, picketing. Demands on institutions and governments and businesses, backed up by boycotts or pickets or .... That's what movement s hae _always_ been. In the U.S. movements end when they are absorbed into the Democratic Party. No movement has ever survived long after defining itself by its relation to the DP. A movement does NOT consist in giving cheering for a savior. We don't know, actually, how movements get underway. Thousands of people around the country Have _always_, at any given time, been engaged vigorously in the kind of actions that start movements, but for the most part, decade after decade, they don't go anyplace. Then under some set of unpredictable conditions they ignite. The fact that so many people are always already trying their damndest in hundreds of localities to start a movement is what makes Jim's and the Sandwichman's (and my) calls for a movement sort of pointless. We keep on working: monthly or weekly meetings, forums, leaflettings (all of this is going on constantly) just because we do not know _when_ such activities will suddenly ignite something larger, but unless we keep them up, no ignition. What pisses us off about Obama's pseudo-movement is that it drains off resources from that constant low-level activity which is so necessary as the condition for any movement when it does start. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho